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Unexploded Bombs by Oregonian

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When Dudley reached the cafe, he saw that Harry was already there. Harry raised a hand in greeting but didn’t smile, maintaining a serious expression on his face. The two men ordered sandwiches and tea as take-away, then stepped back out onto the street, holding their lunches in paper bags.

–Where can we go that’s private?” Harry asked, glancing left and right along the busy pavement.

–There’s a small old church about two blocks that way,” Dudley replied, pointing down the street with his free hand, –We can go there.”

–Will there be other people there?” Harry asked.

–I dunno. Let’s try it.”

After a rapid walk along the pavement, weaving around the slower-ambling pedestrians, they arrived at the old church, a modest building of gray stone with narrow windows and worn steps. It had a narrow side yard with a few shrubs and an empty bench.

–There,” Harry said, and they entered the gate, skirted the wall of the church to the bench, and sat down. Without opening his paper sack, Harry got right to the point,

–Dudley, there was nothing in that room that would have killed him, nothing magical I left behind.”

–Then why…”

–Someone sabotaged the house while you were gone. I think they planted a killing curse mechanism of some sort. The room was booby-trapped, just waiting for someone to come back.”

Dudley stopped in the middle of opening his bag and stared at Harry.

–Why? Why hurt us? What did we do to them?”

–Not you, me,” Harry said. –See, the location tells us all. It wasn’t in your lounge or your dining room or kitchen or bathrooms or your bedrooms. It was in my bedroom, the one place I would go if I ever went back to the house. I was the target. Merlin, why did I never think of that — that they would sabotage your house, among all the other things they did? I should have seen it, should have warned you, should have had the house checked. Merlin, how could I be so stupid? Just let you go back there?”

He balled his hands in fists and stared at the ground, repeating –Stupid!” with a little shake of his head.

–Who? Who are you talking about?” Dudley asked, feeling alarmed by Harry’s vehemence. –The dementors?”

–No,” said Harry, –the Death Eaters. Followers of Lord Voldemort. Dark wizards. There was a whole bunch of them. They were killing Muggles for fun. But I thought if you left the house you’d be safer. I never thought about booby-traps.”

–Like buried land mines left over after a war, killing people years after the war is over,” Dudley reflected. –Unexploded bombs.” He opened his sandwich packet and began to eat. –Were there others of these things, after the war?”

–Actually, I can’t think of any,” Harry said. –Only this one, which is what makes me think it was directed at me.” He finally took a bite of his own sandwich. –It may have been installed during that brief period between Voldemort’s death, when it was plain that I was still alive, and the time when the remaining Death Eaters were rounded up and you went back to the house. Pure spite, that’s what it was. Killing me wouldn’t bring their precious leader back again.”

–And sloppy too,” Dudley added. –They killed the wrong person. My dad took a hit for you, Harry.”

–I know,” Harry replied. –It’s true that there was never any love between us, and I was glad to get out of the house, but I never wanted this. I never wanted him to be dead. Or you or your mum either.” He gave a little, rueful laugh. –I guess that sounds kind of awkward, but you know what I mean.”

–Is there any way to find out who did this?” Dudley asked.

Harry took his paper cup of tea with its plastic snap-on lid out of his bag and cradled it in his hands.

–Probably not after all this time. It’s been nineteen years.”

–I’d like to think they got what was coming to them.”

–Maybe they did,” Harry said, more briskly. –We caught an awful lot of them.”

–So now what?” Dudley asked, looking at Harry expectantly.

–I gotta get a bunch of my fellows to check the house out,” Harry told him. –Don’t you go back to the house, don’t even set foot in it, or let your mum come back, until we’re finished. If there are curses there, we can undo them.”

–The ambulance guys weren’t hurt,” Dudley pointed out, –so maybe there was just one.”

–Thank Merlin for that,” Harry said. "We’ll do it tomorrow morning, okay?”

–I’ll be there,” Dudley assured him, –but if it’s all the same to you, I’ll stay outside in the garden.”

–Yeah,” Harry said, standing up. –It’s better that way.”

********

At sunrise the next morning Dudley was waiting in his car in front of his parents’ house on Privet Drive when a big black Range Rover pulled up and stopped at the curb. Watching the three men get out of the vehicle, Dudley thought to himself –Ghostbusters” and smiled. The old Muggle movie of that title was just a fictional comedy, but here was the real thing.

Dudley got out of his car and joined the group on the lawn: his cousin Harry and two other men whom Harry introduced as Peter and Jerry, both Aurors and Cursebreakers.

–How long will this take?” Dudley asked them, looking nervously at first one man and then the other.

–Depends on what we find,” the Auror named Peter replied. –An hour, a couple of hours.” He shifted the black tote box he was holding from one hand to the other. It looked heavy, Dudley thought.

–Oh, I’m not in a hurry,” Dudley said hastily. –Take as much time as you need. Best to do the job thoroughly, don’t you think?”

–Yeah,” Harry said with a wan smile. –We’ll be thorough. Just a little bit late, that’s all.”

The three wizards started toward the front door. Dudley made a motion as if to follow them with the door key, but by then they were at the door, which swung open without any help, and they disappeared inside the house, Dudley staring after them as the door closed again.

He glanced at his wristwatch; the time was 6:20 a.m. and the sun had risen over the horizon of trees and rooflines, shining straight into his eyes if he looked toward the east. He made a quarter turn to look back at the façade of the house with its tidy curtains visible through the windows and the leafy shrubs in a row underneath them. He wondered what was going on inside the house as he stared at it, what the Aurors were finding and doing, but he was nevertheless glad not to be inside with them.

They probably don’t want anyone to see their mumbo-jumbo, he thought, and I’d just be in the way.

A jogger went by on the street, a young woman dressed in skin-tight dark purple running clothes and a white headband. A few minutes later there was another pedestrian, an older woman walking a little long-haired dog on a leash, and Dudley realized that while he stood there on the lawn waiting for the Cursebreakers to do their work, there would be more and more people on the street as the town woke up, and they would wonder why he was just standing on the lawn staring at the house like a burglar waiting for the right moment to make a break-in.

I have to do something, he though, so he went around the house to the back garden and took a grass rake out of the shed. He glanced up at the backside of the house, at the window that looked in on Harry’s upstairs bedroom, but there was nothing to see except the reflections of the sky and the trees on the glass. Dudley walked back to the front garden and began to rake the scattered dead leaves that sparsely littered the lawn; it was too early in the season for the main leaf fall.

Dudley could feel the tension in his arms, shoulders, and neck as he raked. He tried to focus all his attention on the precise strokes of the rake and the tidy appearance of the part of the lawn, ever increasing in area, that was leaf-free. He knew his father would have liked to see him keeping the place neat. But every time he turned his body so that the Range Rover came into view, the tension returned, and he had to stop pretending that it was just garden work that was going on.

He was not in a hurry. He didn’t know how long the activities in the house would take, and he didn’t want to run out of work to do on the lawn by raking fast, so he stopped from time to time to simply look at the shrubs and flower beds. He had always assumed that his parents would live in this house, well, forever, and that his father would always do the garden work. But now he knew that Vernon had already been looking ahead to a time when this house would be too much for him and Petunia, and suddenly, with no advance notice, that time had arrived.

When all the leaves had been raked into a yellow and brown pile on the edge of the lawn, Dudley checked his watch again. It was 7:15 a.m., and cars were passing frequently in the street now. He stood there, leaning on his rake, waiting, and then the front door opened and the trio of wizards emerged onto the front porch.

Dudley walked up to them, still holding the rake, and asked, –What did you find? Is the house safe?”

Harry glanced at the two other Aurors as if to gain their assent that he be the one to speak, and then he said, –Your father was right, Dudley. There was something planted in my old bedroom. The traces of it were very apparent. But it seems to have been a one-time curse. We didn’t find any active curses, either there or in any other room.”

Dudley felt confused by this news. Magical curses were a subject he had almost no conception of.

–What does that mean, ‘traces of it’?” he asked.

The Auror named Peter cleared his throat and answered, –It’s possible to tell when a curse has been used and what kind of curse it was. In this case it was a low-power curse, not likely to cause structural damage, but able to kill a human being.”

–But wasn’t it meant to kill Harry? Why did it kill my dad?”

–A curse can be made for a specific target, so that it is triggered by the presence of only that person,” Peter explained, –but it takes some skill and sophistication to do that. This curse was a lot simpler, even cruder, you might say. Either the maker didn’t have the skill, or he didn’t care.”

–The wizarding equivalent of the Molotov cocktail,” Dudley said. He turned and walked back toward the middle of the lawn, shaking his head slowly. His father had died for nothing, like those poor souls they showed on the telly who were killed randomly by car bombs set off by terrorists. He glanced back over his shoulder and saw the Aurors following him onto the lawn. Jerry was holding the large black case by its handle, and normally, Dudley realized, he would wonder what kind of equipment was in the case, but now he could not summon the curiosity. His house had been violated. His father had been murdered.

–The house is safe now,” Harry said. –The curse is gone. There are no others. It’s just a house again.”

–How can you be sure?” Dudley exclaimed.

Jerry spoke for the first time. –Trust me,” he said in a solemn voice. –We’re sure.”

That’s all, Dudley thought. They don’t explain anything, probably can’t explain anything. They just tell me to trust them And I guess I have to do it because I don’t understand any of this.

He took a deep breath and stood up a little straighter in the morning sunlight, holding his rake upright like the standard of the householder.

–Do I owe you something for this? Is there a fee for your services?” The Aurors seemed to him to be a cross between exorcists and exterminators. He didn’t know about exorcists, but he knew you had to pay exterminators.

The Aurors glanced at one another, and faint smiles appeared on their faces.

–No, Dudley, there’s no fee. It’s on the house,” Harry said, and then he winced at the unintended bad pun.

–It’s what I pay my taxes for, I guess,” Dudley said, in a feeble attempt at a joke. –Thank you fellows so much. I don’t know what I would have done.” He held out a hand to Peter and Jerry and shook their hands warmly.

–Don’t mention it,” Peter said. –Glad to help.” He turned to address Harry. –I think we’re done here,” he said, and he and Jerry moved toward the black Range Rover.

"You guys go along now,” Harry told them. –I’m going to stay and talk with my cousin for a bit. I’ll be along later, and I’ll write the report.”

Harry and Dudley watched as the Range Rover pulled away from the curb and headed down Privet Drive.

–Your mates, they’re very business-like and efficient,” Dudley remarked as the black vehicle turned a corner in the distance and disappeared.

–Yeah, it’s their line of work,” Harry said, rubbing the back of his neck. –But it doesn’t mean that I don’t feel something of what this all means.”

–You do?” Dudley challenged him. –Your evil wizards just killed my father, after I thought that all that trouble was behind us.”

–Yes,” Harry agreed, nodding. –They killed my father and mother too.”

Dudley did not respond for a minute. He gazed around the neighborhood, looking at the familiar houses bathed in the lemon yellow light of early morning. Finally he spoke again.

–We lived together for a long time, you and my family, and I don’t think we ever gained anything from it.”

After a few seconds Harry answered, –I was about to say that I didn’t gain anything either, but that’s not true. Your mum took me in, to protect me, and if she hadn’t done, I wouldn’t have lasted a fortnight. Then, when I was older, I defeated Lord Voldemort, who was a cancer for the whole world and would have tormented everyone if he hadn’t been stopped. So you gained something from that. But your mum was the real hero because it couldn’t have happened without her, even though she didn’t want to.”

–My dad, he took a hit for you, Harry,” Dudley insisted. –Those dementors, that curse, none of that would’ve happened to us if we weren’t associated with you.” He felt himself gripping the rake handle harder and made a conscious effort to relax.

Harry nodded. –Yeah, it was your bad luck to be my family. My bad luck too. Truth was, your dad hated me, even more than your mum did, and he didn’t mean to take the curse that was directed at me, like my mum did, but that’s how it turned out anyway.”

The cars went by on Privet Drive, and two women in workout clothes, walking briskly along the pavement side by side, waved and called out a cheery greeting. The air had been completely still at sunrise, but now a little breeze was picking up as the ground began to warm from the rays of the sun.

Dudley brought his gaze back to Harry’s face. –I think of our family and I envision a rickety machine made of broken-down parts, but it still kind of functions somehow.”

–Yeah,” Harry laughed. –Even your Aunt Marge. She was such a jerk, if you don’t mind my saying so, all those cruel things she said about me and my parents. I hated her, but…”

–But now she’s taken my mum in for a few weeks so she won’t be alone while I have to work. I guess nobody’s all bad.”

Harry reached out his hand. –Here, give me the rake. We’ll put it away.”

–Do you know where it goes?” Dudley asked.

–Do I know where it goes? You gotta be kidding. I raked this lawn a million times when I was a kid.”

–I raked it some too.”

–Dudders, it will take you many years to match the number of hours I put in on this garden. I was the king of garden work.”

–That wasn’t my fault,” Dudley said.

–No, Big D, it wasn’t.”

They walked around the house to the shed in the back garden. Harry opened the door and looked inside; all the tools and the lawn mower were lined up just as he remembered them. He put the rake away, and Dudley took out a black plastic garden debris bag.

–What are you going to do now?” Harry asked as they stood beside the shed.

–You say the house is safe, it’s just a house, but I’ll never be comfortable here again. I’ll sell it and move Mum closer to us.”

–Good luck, Dudley. Sorry we had to meet again in such unfortunate circumstances.”

–We’ll keep in touch.”

–Right.”

Harry walked around to the other side of the shed, out of Dudley’s sight, and Dudley heard a sharp sound which he knew meant that Harry had Disapparated back to wherever it was that he worked.

He walked back to the front lawn, bagged the pile of dead leaves, and left the bag on the driveway near the garage. Then he returned to his car. He contemplated the house for a brief minute without any desire to go inside; it was a part of his past, his rickety past made of broken-down parts but still somehow functional.

He got into his car, put it in gear, and drove away.