EPILOGUE
Dudley stepped onto platform nine and three quarters for the first time in his life and kept his eyes resolutely shut.
"For heaven's sake!" came Parvati's amused voice at his side. "You can have a look at the place, it won't kill you."
He could hear the sound of hundreds of excited children running to and fro around him, the irritable squawks of what he had long since come to recognize were owls, and- good God, was that someone talking about flying carpets? He grudgingly lifted his eyelids by a fraction and took in the chaos of the bustling platform, blanketed in clouds of thick white steam issuing from a scarlet train awaiting its passengers.
A small hand tightened around his and Dudley looked down to see a pair of round, apprehensive eyes gazing up at him. All his discomfort was forgotten in an instant as he bent down to pat his daughter's head.
"It's nothing to worry about," he said firmly, while Parvati gave the girl a tight hug. "Remember, your mother and your uncle had the best times of their lives here. You'll do so well, you'll see." If I'd had the chance to go...
"I'm not worried about that, Daddy." Her dark pigtails bounced around her as she shook her head, looking so much like her mother that Dudley had to smile. "I'm thinking how embarrassing it would be to get sorted into Hufflepuff."
"Stella," said Parvati sternly, though it looked like she was trying to hold back a laugh. "Hufflepuff is a lovely house. I've known many great witches and wizards who were in Hufflepuff."
Stella pursed her lips critically. "Sure. But James Potter would never let me live it down, would he? Just wait until I get out on the Quidditch pitch, I'll show him..."
"I thought we talked about this Quidditch thing!" said Dudley hastily, chivying them forward to make room for another family materializing behind them. Through a solid brick wall. There were some things Dudley had never quite gotten used to.
"Daddy!" Stella batted her eyelashes, grinning mischievously.
"I don't think so," Dudley insisted. The very thought of his daughter zooming through the air on a bloody broomstick, dodging bits of possessed metal like cannonballs, made him feel queasy.
"Guess you'll be watching from the sidelines then," said a sly voice behind them, and a family of five emerged from the shifting masses of steam, carrying heavy trunks. The one who had spoken, a red-haired boy of about fourteen, tugged at one of Stella's pigtails before laughing and racing away with his trunk. His father looked after him with a hopeless sort of amusement before turning back to smile at Dudley, Parvati, and Stella.
"Hey there Big D," said Harry.
Dudley rolled his eyes and Ginny Potter laughed.
"Oh, don't worry, just try calling him the Chosen One and he'll sober right up," she said.
Stella harrumphed to direct the general attention back to herself, still staring after James. "Oh, I can't wait to learn all kinds of jinxes to try on him."
"Don't you dare," Parvati said.
"Oh I don't know, it might do him a bit of good," replied eleven year old Lily Potter, whose trunk was almost as tall as she was and in imminent danger of crushing her flat. "C'mon, Stella, you can sit with me and Hugo."
The adults moved to help Lily, Albus, and Stella with their trunks, wending their way through the dense crowd to the doors of the train. Dudley had grown accustomed to seeing people in the wizarding world pause to stare at his cousin with awe, but he still found Harry's embarrassment every time it happened a little amusing.
"Oh good, Dad's calmed his nerves," said Stella, noticing Dudley's slight snicker. "I thought he might run away screaming, with Rose Weasley walking around with that family of pygmy puffs on her shoulder.
"Pygmy what?" asked Dudley, distracted, but Stella smirked.
"I was only joking, Daddy."
Dudley tried, and failed, to scowl. His daughter's vivaciousness never ceased to amaze him. He thanked his lucky stars every day for how much she had turned out like her mother. Still, he was hard put to keep up with her sometimes. When he had brought her to one of his father's dinner parties when she was four...
Vernon and Petunia Dursley had come over surprisingly tolerant of Dudley's choices after it had become clear that they would lose him entirely if they refused to accept his engagement to Parvati. This détente had lasted all of five months. Vernon had stormed out of Dudley's wedding reception after a man named Xylophone Lovegood-a guest of Parvati's and not Dudley's, decidedly-had interrogated him earnestly about his involvement in the Muggle drill industry's conspiracy to dig a tunnel to the center of the earth and uncover the Lord of the Crumpled Horned Snorkacks who slumbered there. Afterward Dudley had made many attempts at reconciliation, most of which had gone disastrously. Notably, the time Stella had accidentally caused the Dursley's dinner table to dance the conga during dessert. So Dudley had decided to let it rest. His mother wrote weekly; his father would come back to him some day.
Besides, he had enough in his life to fill him with wonder every day, and wasn't that enough? It still struck him as dreamlike, sometimes, the way such an array of terrifyingly unique people, good people, had seen fit to accept him into their world. He had wasted so many years hating magic... But he was here now.
"Be good," he instructed, hugging his daughter and patting the other children on the head. Parvati was getting watery-eyed at his side, and he himself felt a lump rise in his throat as Stella raced into her compartment to wave at them through the window. He waved back even long after the train had sped out of sight.
"Merlin," commented the familiar voice of Ron Weasley, as he and Hermione stepped out from a cloud of steam to join Harry and the rest in waving at the train. "It's a bit insulting how excited they are to leave us every year, innit?"
"We were the same," said Hermione. "Hi Dudley, Parvati."
Dudley nodded and Parvati said, "How was the House Elf Benefit dinner, Hermione?"
"Oh it was lovely! A real success. Do you know Kingsley Shacklebolt was there-" She broke off abruptly as Dudley let out a strangled cry and smacked himself on the forehead with his hand.
"What is it?" asked Parvati with alarm.
"We forgot to pack her those sandwiches to eat along the way!"
Parvati's eyebrows flew up and she gave him a look of such bemused affection that Dudley's heartbeat stuttered. How could he have been so lucky to deserve her, even after all this time?
"There will be a trolley on the train with sweets for the kids to eat," she assured him, giving him a reassuring kiss.
"Oh," muttered Dudley after a pause, his cheeks reddening at the snickers from the Potters and Ron. "Right. Being stupid."
"No," said Parvati softly, "I really don't think so." She gave Hermione an odd, furtive look and a nod, and something seemed to pass between them, because Hermione stepped forward.
"I agree," said Hermione. "You're a lot smarter than you give yourself credit for. For instance, I think if you try you'll be able to understand this: there are some rules that are rather fundamental to magic. Gamp's Laws of Elemental Transfiguration, for example, the first of which states that no magic can bring back the dead."
She had already begun to lose Dudley at 'Elemental Transfiguration' but he made a valiant effort to pay attention, because the others were now watching him with guarded expressions. He could sense that something was happening, though he did not know what it was.
"This law extends to dead cells within a living body," Hermione went on in that practiced lecturing tone as though she had absorbed an entire encyclopedia. "Which is why severe injuries can't be fixed magically once they've already healed over. Do you understand?"
Dudley crinkled his nose in concentration.
"Is that why Harry wears glasses?" he asked at last. "I always wondered."
Hermione grinned. "As a matter of fact, yes. But once in a while the magical world also faces certain advance, like the invention of the Wolfsbane potion, notably. And sometimes what we think we know about our most fundamental laws changes."
Dudley gaped at her and squeezed Parvati's hand tightly, her solid presence reassuring him. Was this going where he thought it was?
"So are you saying-? "
"No magic will ever be able to reawaken the dead," said Hermione hurriedly. "But in the case of certain types of tissue embedded within a living system, progress has been made. A connection of mine in the Department of Mysteries contacted me about a type of restorative potion that could, potentially, galvanize your cells into-"
"Hermione," Ron interrupted fondly, "speak English, will you?"
Hermione sighed. "I made you a promise once, Dudley, do you remember? That if you worked with me I would help you. How would you like to be able to take up boxing again?"
Dudley spluttered incoherently for a moment, his mind struggling to come to grips with what he was hearing. Finally he managed to choke out, "Took you long enough!"
The entire company burst into laughter, attracting many unabashed stares from the families now exiting the platform. The place crackled with magic, every inch of it, as evidenced by the way the light indicating it was safe to step up to the edge of the platform hovered, unsupported, five feet above the ground. But the midday sun bathed their surroundings in a warm, golden glow and Stella was on her way to the greatest adventure of her life and now, it seemed, Dudley might be on his way to embarking on an adventure of his own. The faces of his cousin and his friends and Parvati-her most of all-showed nothing but delight on his behalf. And that, he thought, was worth more than any potion or spell.
The Phoenix Or The Flame by GinnyRULES
Chapter Notes: A/N: Sooo... I promised an epilogue on this story and then vanished for like four months. I have no excuse, I'm the worst. If anyone is still reading I salute you for bearing with me through all my insane hiatus periods, and I hope you enjoy this finale. I tried to take into account as many of your suggestions as possible. Huge thanks to everyone who's reviewed for your continuing enthusiasm. I've never gotten such wonderful response on a story before. I have a few new fics in progress/in the works that I plan to post after this (Peter Pettigrew centric, Demetor-centric, Tom Riddle-centric) but there are a few complications so please check out my author's page if you're interested. Cheers!