Dudley Dursley sat in his car, parked at the curb in Grimmauld Place across the street from numbers eleven and thirteen at 6:00 a.m. on September tenth, and waited. The sun was near to rising; the sky was apricot over the rooflines of the houses on the east and pale yellow overhead. Soon the golden light would appear on the sides of the chimney pots, and the pale blue shadows filling the quiet street and dimming the brick façades of the silent old houses would give way to the brighter colors and lighter air of the new day.
Dudley fidgeted, sitting in the driver’s seat and moving his legs a little to encourage the circulation in them. From time to time he glanced at his wristwatch, but most of the time he kept his eyes on the pavement across the street, the pavement in front of numbers eleven and thirteen. He was waiting for his cousin Harry Potter to appear. Dudley desperately needed to talk with Harry, but a meeting between the two of them was not easy for Dudley to arrange. He could not send Harry a letter by post because mail was not delivered to either Harry’s home or his workplace. Harry did have a post office box for mail sent by Muggles, but Dudley doubted that Harry checked that box very often. Dudley was aware that messages could be sent by messenger owl, but he had no idea how to get his hands on an owl that knew how to carry a letter to a stipulated recipient. So far as he knew, Harry was not online, so e-mail was not an option. And if Harry had a mobile phone, Dudley did not know the number.
So he sat in his car, holding a long white envelope in his hands, and watched and waited.
He had not seen Harry for a long time, more than a year, he reflected. They always exchanged greeting cards at Christmas — Dudley sent his card to the post office box — and Dudley had notified Harry by the same method when his father, Vernon Dursley, had died of an apparent heart attack in the latter part of August. It had not been an entirely unexpected death; Vernon was seventy years old and overweight, never exercised, and ate a diet totally at odds with the low-fat, vegetable-predominant menu recommended by his doctor. But nevertheless, his doctor had said that Vernon’s cardiac arteries were not badly blocked, and that it was probably a cardiac arrhythmia rather than a blood clot that had caused his sudden cardiac arrest. The doctor had used the term –ventricular fibrillation†on the certificate of death, and although he had explained to Dudley what that term meant, apparently no one knew what had triggered it.
Harry had not come to Vernon’s funeral nor sent a sympathy card. Dudley wondered whether Harry had simply not checked his post office box for a couple of weeks, or whether he had deliberately chosen not to respond. Dudley hoped it was not the latter. He liked to think that the relationship between himself and his cousin had softened since the terrible time of war when Dudley and his parents had been forced from their home and had been made refugees in the midst of a dreadful, bloody conflict that had spilled over from the magical community to threaten even ordinary people like himself and his parents. Harry had invited Dudley to his wedding thirteen years earlier and had attended Dudley’s own wedding three years later. But those events had been about Harry and Dudley, not about Vernon, and Dudley could easily believe that an event focused on Vernon, namely his funeral, would be more than Harry could stomach, knowing that he would have to sit quietly in the church, pretending to pay his respects to a man he had loathed because of a lifetime of mistreatment, and listening to Vernon’s business associates deliver eulogies about what a great man Vernon had been.
So Dudley had accompanied his mother to his father’s funeral as her only blood relative in attendance, after having made all the arrangements, which his mother in her inconsolable grief had been unable to deal with.
His father’s earthly remains having been finally bestowed in their eternal resting place, Dudley had hoped that the crisis of the last few weeks would be behind him and that his life would settle back into its usual routine, disturbed only by the need eventually to decide where his mother would continue to live, whether in the house on Privet Drive in Little Whinging or somewhere nearer to Dudley’s family, but that decision did not need to be urgently made.
As he waited in the car, suddenly Dudley’s attention was captured by a figure that had appeared as if out of nowhere on the pavement between number eleven and number thirteen, a dark-haired man of medium height wearing a black topcoat. As the man began walking along the pavement in the direction of the cross street, Dudley frantically scrambled to seize his envelope, open the car door, untangle his legs from under the steering wheel, and leap out onto the road, calling out, –Harry! Harry!†as he ran toward the retreating figure’s back, without even stopping to lock his car door.
Harry stopped walking in mid-stride and turned halfway, looking over his shoulder as Dudley jogged up to him and stopped, breathing heavily, beside him.
–Dudley,†Harry exclaimed, his eyes widening. –What’s up?â€
–I’m so glad I caught you,†Dudley panted. –I didn’t know how to get ahold of you fast, so I just came by early and waited, hoping to see you.â€
–Well, it’s your lucky day,†Harry answered. –In bad weather I Apparate directly to my office and you’d never have caught me, but when it’s fair like this, I get up early and walk for the exercise. But what’s going on? Why are you here?â€
–Did you get my letter?†Dudley asked. –The one about my father dying? I sent it to your post office box.â€
–Oh,†said Harry, giving himself a head-slap on his forehead. –We’ve been so busy the last few weeks, getting the kids off to school — it’s Al’s first year, you know — I didn’t even think about checking the post box. I’m so sorry, Dudley. Your father died? I’m really sorry to hear that.â€
–That’s okay,†Dudley replied. –We had his funeral last week, but you probably would have been too busy to come anyway.†That was a better idea, Dudley thought, than saying You probably wouldn’t have wanted to come anyway. His father’s death had written a partial finis to the unhappy past. It was time to bury the hatchet.
Harry clapped Dudley on the shoulder. –I would’ve carved out time for you, Big D.â€
–Thanks, Harry. It’s nice to hear you say so.†Dudley paused a moment and then continued. –But that’s not the only reason I’m here today, not even the main reason. I got this letter yesterday.†He held out the long white envelope. –It’s from my dad’s solicitor. It contains a letter that my dad wrote before he died. He left it with the solicitor.â€
Dudley reached into the envelope and drew out a folded letter and a smaller envelope. He unfolded the letter and read, – ‘Dear Mr. Dursley, blah-blah-blah, I am enclosing a sealed envelope your late father left with us, with instructions that it be forwarded to you after his death. Blah-blah-blah, yours very sincerely…’ and it’s signed by Dad’s solicitor. So I opened the little envelope and read what my father had written. It was pretty heavy stuff. It has to do with the old days and all the trouble that was going on. He suspected something — well, it’s all in the letter. You need to read it and tell me what you think, Harry. I don’t know who else to turn to. I can’t call the police and I definitely can’t tell my mother.â€
Dudley held out the smaller envelope to Harry. On the face of it was written –To be delivered to my son, Dudley Dursley, on the occasion of my death.†Without speaking, Harry took the envelope, slid the contents out, unfolded the sheet of paper, and began to read silently. Dudley watched as his cousin’s eyes moved back and forth across the sheet; he knew that his late father’s handwriting had deteriorated from years of hasty business scrawls and advancing age, but Harry seemed to be having no trouble reading it.
–Dear Son,†the letter read, –I am leaving this letter with Mr. Burke, to be delivered to you if I die. There is something you need to know about your cousin Harry Potter. I thought that all that unpleasantness was behind us, after the way that he and his odd acquaintances had meddled in our lives so badly, even driving us from our home and keeping us under house arrest with those freakish gaolers for almost a year, while my business went to hell and you missed a year of school and your poor mother fretted herself almost to death. And when we were finally allowed to return home, the garden was all overgrown and full of weeds, and we had to give out cockamamie stories to the neighbors about why we had left so suddenly and where we had been. But we finally got everything straightened away, without any help from your cousin or his friends, I might add, even though they were the ones who had caused all the trouble for us.
–What I need to tell you now is that I have been thinking of selling the house and moving to a smaller house with a smaller garden that doesn’t need so much maintenance. I’m not getting any younger, you know, and your mother and I don’t need so much space. And a smaller house would be easier for her to keep clean.
–You know what that means, Son. I have to clean out your cousin’s room. Nobody has gone in there since the night we left. We have just kept the door closed. God only knows what kind of freakish magic stuff he left behind. I’m surprised that your mother and I haven’t died in our beds from toxic fumes seeping out from under the door, or maybe been burnt to a crisp from spontaneous combustion.
–Recently I have thought I heard little noises coming from that room occasionally. Maybe it’s just mice in the walls. Your mother doesn’t hear it, but as you know she has been getting hard of hearing, and she won’t wear hearing aids. Something about female vanity. I haven’t said anything to her because I don’t want to upset her.
–But I intend to look into that room and see if it is safe to clear it out. Everything in that room, furniture and all, will go to the dump. I won’t keep anything. I’m sure it is all tainted. I’ll hire some local boys to haul it all away. If your cousin had wanted any of it, he would have come back for it, so I guess he thinks it is just rubbish too. It is pretty cheeky of him to leave it here for me to deal with, but that’s just like him. I don’t want him to come back anyway.
–If we get the room cleared out without any difficulty, I will take this letter back from Mr. Burke and destroy it. Otherwise it will be delivered to you.
Your Father.
Harry looked up from the letter and said, –Your father says that after you all returned to the house, you never went into my room again? That’s right?â€
–Yes,†Dudley said, shifting his feet on the pavement uneasily. –I lived there one more year while I finished school, and we acted like everything was normal. Never talked about you, or even about the year when we were in hiding. Just pretended it never happened. The only change was that my schoolmates had gone off to university and I was in a class with kids who were a year younger than me. Then I finished at Smeltings and went off to university, and after that I wasn’t at home very often.
–Then Dad died and we figured it was what the doctor said: his heart gave out. Then I got this letter from the barrister. I’m not sure. I’m thinking he shouldn’t have gone into that room.â€
Harry shook his head slowly. –All I left there was my old trunk with my old school books, my cauldron, my robes, and a few odds and ends. Nothing magical or dangerous. Nothing that would make noise. I don’t see how it would have been dangerous for him to go into the room. Where was he when he died? Where did they find the body? Was your mother at home?â€
–Mum found him upstairs and called 999. Then she called me. But by the time I got there, the ambulance had already taken him away. They pronounced him dead at the hospital, but he was already dead at home. I don’t know how long it was before Mum found him. She doesn’t hear too well anymore, and she didn’t hear him fall.â€
Dudley crossed his arms over his chest and rubbed his upper arms. He was more lightly dressed than Harry and was beginning to feel cold in the early morning chill, standing there on the pavement on the shady side of the street.
–Was the door to my room open?†Harry asked. –Was his body found in or near my room?â€
–I don’t know exactly,†Dudley replied. –I never asked, didn’t realize it might be important.†He stood thinking for a minute. –My mum’s gone to spend a couple of weeks with Dad’s sister, Aunt Marge, but I could contact the South East Coast Ambulance; they’ll have a record of this ambulance run and who the ambulance crew was. Maybe they’d remember.â€
That’s a good idea,†Harry said. –If he never went into the room, wasn’t near it at all, then maybe this is just a horrible coincidence. But if he did…†His voice trailed off.
–Thanks, Harry. I’ll give them a call. Maybe this will turn out to be nothing, just an old man’s fears. But I had to check. It made me kind of uneasy. Sorry to have bothered you.â€
–It’s not a bother, Dudley,†Harry reassured him. –I’ll call you at noon, and you can let me know what you find out.†He put out his hand, and Dudley grasped it firmly. The two men said their goodbyes, Harry started up the street on foot, and Dudley went back to his car.
Arriving back at his house, Dudley waited until after 8:00 a.m. to telephone the ambulance station that served the area of Little Whinging and inquire about the ambulance run to number four Privet Drive on the previous August twenty-fifth. The dispatcher who answered the telephone looked up the record of that event and scanned the ambulance crew’s brief written report.
–It says here that the subject was found upstairs on the floor…mentions a bedroom and a hallway…mostly it’s about the condition of the victim, not much about the surroundings. Sorry.â€
–Does it list the names of the ambulance crew? Would it be possible to talk to one of them?†Dudley asked. –They might remember something.â€
–Sure,†the dispatcher answered. –Let’s see, there’s Nigel Cusbourne, Oliver Tappan, and Andrew…Hey, Andrew’s in the station now. Let me put him on the line.†Apparently the dispatcher turned his head away from the telephone because Dudley could hear his voice more faintly calling, –Andy! There’s a fellow that needs to talk to you about that run to Privet Drive a couple of weeks ago.â€
A few seconds later another voice came on the line. –This is Andrew Wright. How can I help you?â€
Dudley introduced himself and inquired about the exact location of his father’s body when the crew had arrived at his parents’ house.
–Well, let’s see,†said Andrew. –Let me look at this report to refresh my memory. Ah yes, now I remember. It was upstairs, down at the far end of the hall. We found your father in a bedroom, well, almost in a bedroom. He was lying on his back, with his head out in the hallway and the rest of his body in the room.â€
–As you walked down the hallway towards my father’s body, was the bedroom on the right or on the left?†Dudley asked.
–It was on the right.â€
Harry’s room, Dudley thought.
–Thank you very much,†he said. –Oh, one more thing. Did you notice anything unusual or noteworthy in the bedroom or the surroundings while you were there?â€
–No,†said the other man slowly, –not so as I remember. But of course my mates and I were concentrating our attention on your father, so I probably wouldn’t have noticed much. Is there anything else I can help you with?â€
–I don’t think so. Thank you very much. You’ve helped me a lot.†Dudley rang off and just sat there. His father had opened the door to Harry’s room and had stepped inside. They had been the last steps he had taken in his life. Dudley felt numb, as if the past were reaching its long arms out to clutch at his family again, as if there was no escape. Harry had assured him that there had been nothing dangerous in that room. Was he merely mistaken or deliberately lying?
Dudley bestirred himself. It was time to go to work. He would talk with Harry again at noon.
A few minutes before noon, while Dudley was still in his office at his workplace, his mobile phone rang. It was Harry.
–Did you get ahold of South East Coast Ambulance?†Harry asked. –What did they say?â€
–They said they found my dad lying on his back, with his head in the hallway and his body in your bedroom.â€
There was a moment of silence, and then Dudley heard Harry say, –This changes everything. Can you meet me for lunch? Where do you usually eat?â€
Dudley named a little cafe near his office, and Harry said, –I’ll meet you there in ten minutes. We’ll get something to take away, and find a private place to talk.â€