thequantumwritings:mcgregorswench:thebibliosphere:wtfiswrongwithme:keepcalmimspidey:midoriko-sama:th
thequantumwritings:mcgregorswench:thebibliosphere:wtfiswrongwithme:keepcalmimspidey:midoriko-sama:the-chicken-is-not-amused:artschoolglasses:I will never forgive them for cutting out this scene.Tumblr app doesn’t show this gif set but I already know what it is. No need to hesitate to reblog.And he did this just before a road trip, stuck in the car with his parents asking what he was thinking.The look of utter defiance Dudley gives Vernon as he steps over the fence though And how he does it really slowly as well as if to say “What you gonna do about it huh?”The phone rings. It was an absurd wedding gift from his father in-law, and one which much to Harry’s surprise, had actually worked when he’d plugged it into the landline. Arthur had taken to phoning him on it, just for the pure novelty of the thing—though how they’d managed to get a BT engineer out to the Burrow without causing an incident, Harry doesn’t know. He’s not sure he wants to.“Hello?”“Uhm,, is this…is this the Potter residence?”There’s a beat of silence as Harry adjusts the receiver against his ear, not quite sure he’s heard who he thinks he has. “…Dudley?”“Yea…uhm, Harry?”“Dudley.” Harry repeats numbly, turning to look at Ginny who is looking at him expectantly, eyebrows raised. “Uh…Christ, Dudley, hi how did…how did you find this number?”There’s another beat of silence and the crackle of static that might have been a sigh or simply just the line breaking up. “Hi, sorry I know you probably…sorry this was stupid. I uh, I put your name in the computer and this was the only thing that came up.”“Oh.” Harry breathes, still trying to recover his equilibrium. Ten minutes ago he’d been using his wand to clear away dinner, he’d been getting ready to sit down and read through some reports before putting the kids to bed, and now somehow, he’s talking to his muggle cousin who he hasn’t seen since… “How, how are you?”“Good, yea” Dudley replies, seeming to rally, “You?”“Yea, uh, doing well…”The conversation lasts maybe a half hour, faltering and awkward. But they’re going for a coffee at the end of the week and Harry supposes…that’s…that’s a thing that is happening.*“Harry…”Harry turns and looks up, and looks up some more at the looming figure blocking out the light. “Dudley,” he says, standing up and hoping the pang of something awful doesn’t show on his face. For a moment he thought he’d been looking at Vernon. “It’s good to see you.”Dudley gives him a look that says he clearly knows Harry is lying, but is thankful for being humored. “You too, you’re looking good…”They pass the first few minutes with awkward pleasantries and even more awkward silences. But it’s…nice would be too strong a word, but it’s not bad either. He even manages to get a smile out of him when he calls him Big D, the other man shaking his head with a self depreciating eye roll.“Dad died,” Dudley says after a while, and Harry feels an icy hot flash go down his spine, curdling in his gut.“Oh,” he says, not quite sure how he’s supposed to feel about that, “I’m sorry to hear that.”Dudley snorts into his coffee. “Somehow I doubt it.” and it’s not accusing, but Harry still can’t help but feel like he should defend himself. The words they locked me in a cupboard are on the cusp of his tongue but Dudley gets there before him. “There’s a lot of things…looking back…lot of things…” and it’s not an apology, not really. “Took me a long time to realize certain things weren’t right…too long.” Harry nods at that, because yes, it had also taken him a long time too to understand the full of extent of what had gone on in 4 Privet Drive. He still doesn’t like tight spaces.“You realize things though, when you have kids,” Dudley carries on, shaking his head, “Like they’re just kids, how can you do that to a kid? They need you for everything.”And Harry can relate to that too. Lily is three and Ginny is pregnant again and James already has an alarming alacrity for finding trouble and with or without magic Harry doesn’t have enough hands to deal with it all. But he loves it, and he loves them, and the thought of anyone ever treating his children the way he remembers his first eleven years of life is enough to make the electric lights over their head flicker. “You’ve got kids?”“Two,” Harry says, “third one on the way. You?”“Nice. Just the one, so far.” He hands over his phone, the image of a bright young girl with dark skin and tight ringlet curls staring back at him from the grasp of Dudley’s arms. “Effie.” He smiles ruefully at Harry’s obvious surprise. “Dad wasn’t too happy about that either.”“She’s gorgeous.” Harry says, handing the phone back and pulling out his own wallet to reveal the moving pictures inside. Dudley flinches a bit at that, but he guffaws broadly when he spies James. “Cor, he don’t half look like you. No glasses though.”“No,” Harry says, pushing his own glasses back up his nose. “He’s got his mother’s eyes, thankfully.”“Actually, Harry, there was something I was hoping we could…talk about.”And ah, there it is. “What about?”“It’s…it’s about Effie…”And when he’s done talking Harry just wants to lean back and laugh and laugh and laugh, because of course Vernon Dursley’s granddaughter is a witch, of course she is. But he doesn’t, because Dudley is doing the one thing he can think of to try and help his child, and Harry can’t fault him for that.*They keep in touch after that. Christmas cards, postcards—gifts for the kids on birthdays. The year Effie turns eleven—the same as James—Harry drops a casually long thought out text into the familial void.“Diagon A this weekend, if you’re up for it?”The text comes back quickly, a little too quickly for the way Dudders pecks at his phone whenever Harry has seen him typing. “Snds gd, 1st pint on u ;-) - Big D ”It’ll be painfully awkward, it always is. But it’s something.This is so very beautiful! Is there more?Dudley stood on Platform 9 in King’s Cross Station, doing his best to hide how much he was shaking in his loafers. He had been to the magical world on multiple occasions over the years, most often to Diagon Alley, but nothing had prepared him for this.Walking into the Leaky Cauldron was no different from walking into any other pub. Portkeys left from isolated places. And as horrifying as it was to travel by floo, burning up in one fireplace and stepping out of another, at least that was done in private. But this? Four adults and five children with two large trunks would be the picture of normalcy, children going off to school, except that the children kept spouting words that sounded like nonsense, and one of the trunks was accompanied on the trolley by a large tawny owl named Hestia.What’s more, there were no trains scheduled to arrive on either platform 9 or 10, leaving the nine of them uncomfortably conspicuous.Every impulse had Dudley bracing for a smack upside the head as Vernon’s imagined face in his mind’s eye turned crimson with the effort to not cause a scene. This wasn’t right. Good proper folk shouldn’t even be acknowledging magic, let alone going out in public to draw attention to it. Dudley shook his head and forced that anxiety down to focus on his anxiety over the solid brick wall he was apparently about to walk through.“I’ll see you off here on this side,” he told his daughter, kneeling with all the false confidence he could muster. “I…” His façade fell. “I’m too scared to go through with you,” he admitted.“Don’t be ridiculous,” Ginny laughed. “You’re family, like it or not, and that means you’re coming.”“No,” said Harry. “He’s family, which means we don’t force him along. You can stay here if you want, Big D, but you’re more than welcome to join us.”Dudley rose and took a deep breath, setting his jaw with a firm look at the wall. Then his shoulder’s fell and his head bowed. “The other platform’s probably packed full anyway.” He looked up at harry and gestured to his bulk with a weak smile. “I’ll just take up too much space.” He turned away and knelt to hug Effie again with tears of shame in his eyes.Harry started for a moment, then reached out and put his hand on his cousin’s shoulder. When Dudley looked up to meet his gaze, he reached for his hand to bring him back to his feet and into a hug.“I don’t think you’re a waste of space.” -- source link