"Oh, simple thing where have you gone?
I'm getting old and I need something to rely on.
So tell me when you're gonna let me in.
I'm getting tired and I need somewhere to begin.
So if you have a minute why don't we go
Talk about it somewhere only we know?
This could be the end of everything
So why don't we go, somewhere only we know?"
-Somewhere Only We Know (Keane)
Petunia Dursely placed a plate of sizzling bacon and eggs on the breakfast table in front of her son. Dudley ate a few small bites avidly but stopped himself, sighing. He did not miss the look of concern his mother shot in his direction as he pushed the plate away, nor the disconcerted glower his father gave him above the newspaper he was reading.
Dudley downed his glass of orange juice in one gulp.
"All right, that's enough!" thundered Vernon, banging his fist on the hardwood table and upsetting the salt shaker. "What the bloody hell is the matter with you, son? Out with it!"
"Nothing," Dudley muttered as he looked down at his hands. Something about his parents' constant forceful, misguided concern always seemed to make his will crumble to dust.
Vernon threw his arms up into the air in a gesture of semi-maniacal disbelief. "Rubbish! This is the second morning you've been quietly brooding away and all that nonsense in the middle of mealtime. It's not natural!"
Dudley frowned, still staring determinedly at his hands, but made no reply. He could not deny his father's accusations. He had indeed been uncommonly silent and thoughtful for the past few days. This was in large part due to his thinking about her; Parvati had not been back to his office building as promised, and somehow, this made Dudley feel depressed- even more so than usual. He simply could not get Parvati Patil out of his head. But the other, equally puzzling reason, was one he could hardly consider sharing with his family.
Still, it looked as though he might have no choice.
"Now Diddy, you can tell us, dear," pleaded Petunia in a sickeningly sweet, distressed voice. "Go ahead, don't be afraid. Have you been having any more of those bad dreams?"
"No, mum!" exclaimed and embarrassed Dudley in exasperation. The dreams had vanished entirely. He did not think he had ever been more grateful for anything in his life.
"It's nothing to be ashamed of, Popkin," Petunia insisted.
"No," Dudley cried firmly. "It's not that, all right! It's-nothing. Just..." He took a deep breath. "I heard that... Harry... Potter... gettingmarriedsoon."
The reaction to his words was predictable. If he had not been so irritated, Dudley would have burst out laughing. His mother uttered a small scream and accidentally turned the knob on the stove top so high that frighteningly tall blue flames leaped and licked hungrily at the cabinets. His father's meaty hands suddenly clenched together, tearing his newspaper down the middle, and he began to breathe excessively loudly through his nose like a sumo wrestler. Harry Potter's name had not been mentioned by any of them in almost two years.
Dudley resumed gazing at his hands, regretting his inability to keep his mouth shut. He could tell that an explosion of anger was imminent.
"And how," Vernon demanded, carefully detaching every word so that Dudley could see the spittle coming out of his mouth as he spoke, "exactly, did you come by this information?"
"People... talking..." Dudley did his utmost to look anywhere but at his father, a feat made more difficult by the fact that the latter's face had turned an alarming shade of burgundy.
The silence in the room mounted threateningly. Dudley tried to count to a hundred in his head to calm himself down, became confused, lost count, and settled for watching the clock on the wall. After two whole minutes passed, he could stand it no longer, and said, "Mum, the bacon is on fire."
Petunia jumped, seemed to come out of a trance, and hurriedly turned off the stove top. Vernon visibly shook himself and folded up his torn newspaper.
"Well," Vernon spluttered, trying to regain his composure. "Well... so then-Well, that's that."
To Dudley's astonishment, both of his parents seemed to simultaneously decide to ignore his hideous breach of Dursley etiquette, and to pretend that nothing had happened. After the initial shock had passed, they recovered themselves remarkably well. At first Dudley was grateful for the reprieve, but then he began to feel something akin to resentment. Didn't they have any interest, then, in the things that were so upsetting him?
Of course, he knew better than to complain.
At first, in light of the absurd situation he had gotten himself involved in, Dudley had not really registered the fact that Parvati's friend (Was her name Violet? Or Lavender? What kinds of ridiculous names did these people given their children?) actually thought Harry was getting married. Then, when the thought came back to him later, he was sure that she must have been lying. If Harry were about to get married, wouldn't he, Dudley, know about it? Then he realized that he had not been in contact with Harry for years and that, moreover, he had never troubled to find out what his cousin was up to even when they were children and did live in the same house.
So his cousin was engaged to a girl called Jinny Weasel, or something like that. Really, how did that lot come up with such names? Now, Dudley would never have expected to receive an invitation by any stretch of the imagination, but the thought of the impending wedding stirred a certain feeling of melancholy in him.
He did not possess sufficient introspective abilities to understand that the feeling was in fact envy.
Why couldn't he meet a nice girl and have a life with her? Someone sweet and understanding. Someone special. Someone like Parvati Patil.
But that was crazy. He hardly knew her. And more to the point, she was a witch. He was in desperate need of a distraction.
Without warning, Dudley stood up and left the kitchen table. For once, both his mother and father were too preoccupied by their own thoughts to ask what he was doing. Five minutes later, Dudley was sitting at his desk in his room, staring at his computer screen.
His fingers moved across the keyboard, typing out Parvati's name, while his mind wandered as if in a dream. Maybe, if he could just see her face one more time, he would be able to move on with his life.
The first few results to come up when he entered the name into the search bar were for movie starlets or young singers. At the bottom of the second page, Dudley found what he was looking for; a simple, plain site bearing a short message about Parvati's position at a company involved in "human resources". Dudley wiped sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand, confused. He had thought that her identity as a normal person with a regular job was only a facade. But how could someone from her lot operate a computer and create even as inexpert an internet site as this one? Something did not add up.
At the top of the page, Dudley was further surprised to see a list of contact information which would supposedly allow him to reach Parvati. There was even a phone number. Did her lot even own phones? Did it matter? Surely he cold never summon up the courage to attempt to contact a witch. There was no telling what might happen.
In that instant, the sun began to rise in earnest, and Dudley caught sight of its ascent through his window. Something in the way it lit up the sky made Dudley turn back to gaze at the phone number again. He was suddenly acutely conscious that this was yet another morning which he had not entered into with the memory of a nightmare looming in his mind. The change was due to Parvati. There was no denying that fact.
Before he could lose his nerve, Dudley seized the phone from his dresser and dialed the number at the top of his computer screen. It rang four times before a polite female voice-most definitely not Parvati's-answered.
"Hello, this is the, er, company of eclectical studies office," said the voice. "How may I direct your call?"
"I'm... looking for... Miss Parvati Patil," Dudley managed to stammer, unsure what he had gotten himself into.
"Miss Patil is unavailable at the moment. May I take a message for her?"
Dudley thought furiously before answering. His head was beginning to hurt already. "Yeah. Could you, er, say that Dudley Dursley from Grunnings called to... see if she might be visiting again? This is Dudley Dursley. From Grunnings," he finished lamely.
The voice at the other end of the line changed, becoming warmer. "Oh, Mr. Dursley! I have a note here from Miss Patil. She instructed me to remind her to contact you when she returns from her trip to Edinburgh. There was some trouble, you see, and she had to leave on short notice. Would you like me to give you her alternate office number? She may have returned by now."
Dudley said nothing. He could not bring himself to speak. He was getting cold feet alarmingly quickly. But the woman on the phone did not seem discouraged. After asking if he had a pen and a piece of parchment (Dudley frowned at this, sure he had misheard her), she rattled off the new number which Dudley was supposed to take down. He nearly fell over himself in his haste to find a pen, sure he would be unable to remember the number for more than ten seconds. Unable to locate anything with which to write the number, Dudley had no choice but to offer the woman a hasty thanks, hang up, and dial the new number at once.
This time the phone rang seven times, and Dudley was on the verge of hanging up when he heard another voice, this time belonging to a man who sounded rather bored.
"Ministry of Magic service telephone," said the voice. "This is Ernie speaking. How may I direct your call?"
"P-Parvati Patil?" was all Dudley could say.
"Department?" barked Ernie.
"Er..."
Ernie sighed in exasperation. Apparently, patience was not a virtue this lot held in particularly high esteem. "What does Patil do here?"
Dudley had no idea what Ministry of Magic Departments were, let alone what part Parvati might play within them. He took a deep breath and muttered, "Electricity. Mud-er... Muggles."
"Muggle liaison, eh? Right, I'll put you through. Please hold."
Dudley fiddled with a fold in his sweater as he waited. Finally, yet another unknown female voice spoke up.
"This is Magical Creatures. How can I help you?"
"M-magical what?" Dudley repeated, again unsure whether he had heard correctly. Images of monsters with sharp teeth and furry faces immediately cropped up in his mind's eye.
The woman on the phone sounded confused. "Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, yes. This is Hermione Granger, assistant to the head of the Goblin liaison office. Can I do anything for you?"
Dudley's hands were numb as they clutched at the phone. His efforts to reach Parvati were beginning to seem entirely foolish and pointless. He could do nothing but stammer and splutter, struggling to decide whether he should just hurl his phone at the wall and go to work in a black fury, or plough on with his attempt.
"Can I have your name, sir?" asked Hermione Granger kindly.
"Dudley Dursley."
There was a short silence, then a sharp intake of breath. Hermione Granger's voice came back hard and careful.
"Did you say Dudley Dursley?"
Dudley nodded, realized that this would do no good, and said, "Yes."
"Dudley Dursley of Number Four, Privet Drive?"
"Number Fifteen-I mean, Sixteen." The Dursleys were still rather sore about the fact that they had been unable to secure their old residence after coming out of hiding years previously. Still, Dudley reflected, living just down the street from his childhood home was not so bad.
"I see," said Hermione Granger. Her tone was reserved, but not quite unfriendly. Had his thoughts not been otherwise engaged, Dudley might have expected what came next. "You're Harry Potter's cousin, aren't you?"
It dd not occur to Dudley, in his confusion, to lie.
"Yes," he replied. "Yeah, I- Harry Potter. My cousin."
"How did you get this number?"
"From... Parvati Patil."
"Really?" she sounded shocked. Dudley had already half forgotten her name. Was it Harmony Gellar? "Well, Ernie must have connected you to Magical Creatures by accident. You want Muggle liaison. But Parvati isn't back from Edinburgh yet."
Dudley was at a loss for words.
"Do you mind me asking why you're trying to speak with Parvati?" she asked. "I don't meant to be rude, but I had heard that you weren't exactly fond of our lot."
Good God, how did she know the words that were in his head? Another witch, for certain.
When Dudley failed to answer once again, Hermione said, "He was worried about you, you know. Harry. He seemed to think you were headed for a mental breakdown. He even tried to have his friend Kreacher keep track of you, although I warned him that would never work. He said you seemed to regret the things you put him through. Perhaps he was right."
"Could you, er, just please, if you can, let, er, Parvati know that... I called?"
"Of course," Harmony told him, sounding distracted. "I will. Have a nice day, Dudley."
She hung up. Dudley slumped back in his chair, flabbergasted. He was not sure exactly how long he sat staring at his computer screen before he heard the doorbell ring. He trudged downstairs for lack of anything better to do, and relieved his father of the duty of answering the door. When he opened it himself, Dudley came face to face with a young woman with extremely bushy brown hair and kind hazel eyes. She was smiling uncertainly at him.
"Hello," she said. "We spoke on the phone? I'm Hermione Granger."
The Phoenix Or The Flame by GinnyRULES
Chapter Notes: I guess this story just got approved so it basically went up today but I am excited to keep going with it, so I'm posting the next chapter right now. I hope you enjoy it, and happy reading!
Chapter Endnotes: There we are, Dudley's in for some craziness in the near future! Reviews are always appreciated of course, and I respond to all of them :)