It was 31 July.
Dudley Dursley stared down at the drink in his hand. The melting ice was starting to water down his whiskey, but he didn’t mind. He was already on glass number seven and had found himself slowing down. He thought that this might be the first year where he didn’t drink into the double digits.
Dudley didn’t drink often, and he didn’t drink because he liked the taste. He didn’t drink to get pissed or because his mates were having a night out. He drank because it was a way to cope, because the whiskey let him drown his regrets. And Dudley regretted a great many things in his life.
Dudley, at twenty-eight, had only just moved out of his parents’ house and into a flat of his own. His room on Privet Drive had barely changed since he was eleven, and if he were honest with himself, he had barely changed either. He hoped moving out would help, but it hadn’t seemed to yet. And he regretted that.
Dudley dated, and slept with, a string of girls when he was in his early twenties. He didn’t see the point of trying to find someone to settle down with at that age. He treated girls as objects, but his recent change of heart hadn’t yet made girls eager to date him. And he regretted that.
Dudley finished Smeltings Academy and didn’t bother attending university. He went right into the workforce, following his father to Grunnings and drills even though he hated drills and office work. He never attempted to find something he liked doing. He’d been doing the work for nearly a decade now, and he hadn’t had a day where he enjoyed his job. And he regretted that.
Dudley looked at his whiskey and in the amber drink he saw his life laid out in front of him, neat and tidy, like his parents wanted. First, he would move up the ranks at Grunnings (just like his father had). Second, he would meet and marry someone from work who would take care of him (just like his father had). Third, and last, he and his wife would settle down outside the city and raise a spoiled git (just like his father had). Dudley saw where his life was going, and he regretted it all.
Dudley regretted the lack of control he felt he had over his life. He regretted that he let others plan his future. He regretted never once trying to do something he wanted instead of what his parents wanted. He regretted what his life was and what it looked like his life would be. So he drank.
The first glass of whiskey drowned the regrets of his past, the sharp burn dulling the pain of things he couldn’t change.
The second glass of whiskey drowned the regrets of his future, the warmth staving off the chill he felt when he thought about where his life was headed.
The third glass and all other subsequent glasses -- as many as it took until the bartender threw him out of the pub on his arse -- were Dudley’s attempt to drown the single biggest regret of them all.
More than anything else in his short, shallow, selfish life, Dudley regretted Harry Potter.
Dudley regretted how much he’d abused Harry, both verbally and physically, especially when Harry was too scared to fight back. Dudley regretted how much he abused Harry to win his parents’ approval, as though tormenting a child was something they should have been proud of him for doing. Dudley regretted the awful things he’d said about Harry’s parents -- his own Auntie Lily and Uncle James as he now referred to them if only to himself and never ever in front of his parents -- before either of them knew the truth about how they’d died. Dudley regretted the awful things he’d said about Auntie Lily and Uncle James even after knowing the truth. Dudley regretted mocking Harry for his magic because of his own fears of something he didn’t understand. Dudley regretted mocking Harry for Harry’s nightmares, visions of things so horrible he wouldn’t have survived them like Harry had. And Dudley desperately regretted never having said ‘Thank you.’
It wasn’t as though he didn’t try.
After, he’d been nicer -- sort of -- to Harry. Dudley kept his distance for the rest of that summer. The next summer, he treated Harry if not politely at least indifferently; at the very least, he’d stopped tormenting Harry. The summer after that they’d had to escape Privet Drive because the man who’d killed Auntie Lily and Uncle James was coming for Harry, and this time it was the Dursley’s, not Harry, who were caught in the crossfire. Dudley tried to say something that afternoon, before they drove away, but he couldn’t bring himself to say much of consequence.
The following May the witch and wizard who’d escorted Dudley and his parents from Privet Drive brought them back. When Dad saw the state of the house, he refused to get out of the car and demanded to be compensated for damages. Mum didn’t say anything, but she looked ready to cry. Dudley wasn’t sure whether that was because the house looked like a bombed-out shell or because coming home meant Harry was still alive. Dudley hadn’t been able to do much but think for all those months they were in hiding, and he thought a lot about Harry. Seeing the state of the house, Dudley was so very relieved Harry had survived. More than ever he wanted to thank him, but he wasn’t sure how to contact Harry or how Harry would take Dudley’s words, so he said nothing.
But every July 31st Dudley remembered. He remembered a scrawny, speckled boy half afraid of his own shadow, forced to live in a dark, cramped cupboard under the hall stairs. He remembered the strange things that happened, despite Harry’s instance that he didn’t do anything. Dudley remembered laughing at the boy as he cried at night: –Don’t kill Cedric!†And Dudley remember why it was he wanted -- needed -- to thank his cousin.
Dudley knew that Harry had saved his life when they were fifteen. His father still didn’t want to believe it, but Dudley knew that he’d be dead if Harry hadn’t fought off those Dementors.
There was not a day that went by when Dudley didn’t remember that night. He starkly remembered the cold feeling that swept over him, paralysing him. He could never shake the sense that his life was over and that he’d never be happy again. Harry explained, later, that the Dementors that attacked them that night were creatures whose purpose was to drain all the happy feelings from someone and destroy their soul by leaving them with nothing but their worst memories, or worse yet, no soul at all.
Dudley never told anyone what those worse memories were, but he would never forget them. In the deep, dark, cold feeling that the Dementors brought, Dudley finally understood just how awful he was. He saw himself how others saw him: a big, lumbering bully, someone who would belittle or beat anyone who made him feel somehow less significant. And it seemed, in that terrifying instant, that Dudley realized everyone made him feel small because the only people he didn’t beat or belittle were his parents and Aunt Marge.
After their year in hiding, coming home to a house that saw just a small fraction of the devastation and destruction that Dudley knew Harry must have been dealing with for years, that 31st July, as he was finally eighteen, Dudley went to the only pub in Little Whinging and ordered a whiskey. And another. And another. Until he’d had nearly a whiskey each for each year Harry’d been alive. It was his strange way of both celebrating his cousin and apologizing to him even if Harry didn’t know it was happening. It’d been almost a decade since that first Harry-free summer, and each year Dudley sought out a new pub in which to remember.
Shortly after Harry’s eighteenth birthday he and a pretty redhead came to the house. Harry wanted Mum to know that her obligation to someone was over and she wouldn’t be seeing Harry again. Dudley almost let him leave without saying anything, but he screwed up his courage just as Harry was walking out the door of number 4 Privet Drive for the last time. Scampering out the door after Harry, he’d asked if it would be okay if he wrote to Harry every now and again. Harry looked shocked, and sceptical, but acquiesced.
Dudley was never brave enough to do more than the rote holiday card, but he’d received an invitation to Harry’s wedding (which he didn’t attend) and to the baptisms of each of Harry’s three children (which he also didn’t attend). And while he’d never invited Harry to any major occasion, and neither sent cards on their respective birthdays, not a year went by that Dudley didn’t think of Harry on 31 July.
Drowning in It by noblefate
Story Notes:
I used the July 31st prompt: “July 31st is Harry Potter’s birthday! He will soon be thirty two years old. Your story has to be set on July 31st. No reference needs to be made to Harry’s birthday, as particularly since prior to him being born, most minor characters will not be aware of him, but you do need to reference the date in some way.â€
Chapter Notes: Standard disclaimer: I’m just playing with JKR’s toys.