Brother

There was one thing that Dudley had wanted to be when he was a kid. A superhero. The first time his mum let him wander away from her in the supermarket, he'd taken it as an opportunity to leave the supermarket and visit the comic book store next door for the first time. Until that point, he'd only ever seen it in passing as his mother carried or dragged him by had from the car to the market or back the other way. It wasn't the best-kept looking place, the windows were dirty and strange people loitered around in front of it. More than once, he'd caught his mum eyeing it with obvious disdain. But if you weren't paying attention to that other stuff, you saw all of the colorful displays and the bright sign proudly declaring the establishment as Crash Comics. And it had been calling to him all along.

His mum had of course thrown a fit when she'd finally found him after shopping. She wasn't really mad at him. His mum never got mad at him. She did, however, chew out the owner of the supermarket for not noticing him leave the store. And then at comic book storeowner for allowing an impressionable child like Dudley walk into his disgraceful establishment. And on the car ride home, she'd ranted about how things like comic books were immoral and obscene and he shouldn't read them.

Dudley didn't really understand words like immoral and obscene or why she used them when she talked about comic books. He did understand that his mum disapproved, but didn't know why. That day, he'd picked up his first comic book, The Hulk, quickly followed by Spiderman, Captain Britain, and Iron Man, and gotten a taste of what superheroes were about. They had super powers, beat up the bad communists, and saved the day. Everyone loved superheroes. They were the cool guys of the world. Why would his mum think that was a bad thing?

Despite her lectures, Dudley never listened to his mum about comic books, and used almost every cent of his weekly allowance to buy issue after issue. The only other thing his money went towards was for the usual bag of sweeties he'd eat while he flicked through the colorful pages. He only read in the privacy of his room. Only after he locked the door would he reach under his bed and pull out the beat up suitcase he stashed his comic books in and proceed to lounge upon his bed, reading until his mum called for dinner.

One time, he'd brought a copy of Captain Britain to school because he hadn't finished it the night before and wanted to finish it before he bought the next copy on his way home. Another boy had caught him reading it during recess. Dudley had thought that the boy, Piers Polkiss, would mock him, but instead, he'd grinned and gone on about how he read Captain Britain too, but he admitted liking The Hulk more. That moment of shared love for comic books and superheroes forged a lasting friendship between the two boys. They formed an exclusive superhero club and gave themselves superhero names. Dudley was dubbed Big D and Piers dubbed Power Punch. Together, they recruited other boys like them and fought the forces of evil, like adults, his freaky cousin and girls.

Things started changing. They got older.

He and Piers and the rest of the guys stopped playing games that they knew they'd outgrown. Piers had ditched his nickname, but Big D had stuck with Dudley. His friends all said it made him sound cool and dangerous, and the leader of their gang had to be cool and dangerous. Dudley decided that was okay, because cool and dangerous was better than something stupid like Diddykins, which his mum still insisted on calling him. He forgot about liking superheroes. Having powers like they did was abnormal and freakish.

For a while, it wasn't so bad. He started playing rugby and wrestling like his dad wanted him to, and he was pretty good at both. His gang ruled Smeltings and he was at the top. Even if people didn't like him, they learned to not mess with him or his friends. Or else.

Then it did get bad.

Teachers had always disliked him because he didn't pay attention in class, mouthed off, and did poorly on class work. Bullying the rest of the boys at Smeltings didn't put him in their favor either. He got put on academic probation, meaning he couldn't play rugby or wrestle. And teachers became more vigilant in watching him, having him suspended whenever they caught him roughing a kid up. Until that point, his mum and dad hadn't known about his grades or his disciplinary problems. He was able to explain away the first couple letters sent home, but eventually, it stopped working.

The worst day of his life wasn't the worst because his dad yelled at him about ruining his sports career and being a delinquent. It was the worst day of his life because he had to sit across the table from his fragile, now pregnant mum as she cried, begging him to tell her why he would lie and why he would do all those awful things. And all he could do was sit there and ask himself why as well, because if he thought about it, really thought about it, he didn't know why. He didn't know why he kept on sabotaging his life by refusing to do better in class and beating up other kids. He missed rugby and wrestling, and he had long ago stopped enjoying beating people up. It almost wasn't fair, at his size, with his strength, to pummel on people who couldn't dream of taking him on.

He just didn't know what he was doing with his life anymore.

That was the start of a long period of self-discovery for Dudley Dursley. He didn't really know he was on the path of self-discovery, or changing his life. All he knew then was that what he was doing wasn't working. Dudley needed to make grades to get off academic probation and back into sports. He needed to stop beating on other kids because suspension meant he couldn't do sports either. His growing disinterest in his gang eventually caused a falling out between him and Piers. It was strange to find himself so quickly without friends when the gang expelled him from their ranks and put Piers on top. It was stranger to find it didn't bother him as much as he thought it would, especially the part of losing his oldest friend. But Dudley moved past it and made new friends, guys on the rugby and wrestling teams who were just as driven to do well in them as he was. He even hung out with his new tutor, who wasn't such a bad guy despite being a brain with thick glasses.

At home, he got used to the idea he was going to have a new brother. It didn't seem so strange, considering how long Harry had been around. Harry was kind of like a weird freaky brother.

Even the realization that he really did consider Harry like family grew on him. He wanted to try and reach out to Harry, apologize for some of the things he'd done when they were younger. But it seemed like it was too late to try and take it back. The least he could do at that point was finally be decent to his cousin after all this time. Set a good example for Sammy. Strangely enough, Sammy was what made it possible for Dudley to begin to make it up to Harry after all those bad years. He kept his mum and dad off Harry's back when he wanted to give his little brother gifts and play with him. They'd even baby-sit together, and Dudley would dig up his old comic book collections that had been buried under old jerseys and forgotten homework assignments. Sammy couldn't begin to appreciate the awesomeness of the comic books, but at least he liked the colors. But the thing was, Harry actually did like the comic books.

It was like hanging out with Piers back in primary. Except, it was Harry, and then there was also Sammy, and Harry actually liked to talk about the characters and the story and not just the fight scenes. Similar, but different. Different, but not bad.

"Hey Potter," he spoke up one day.

"Yeah?"

Harry was lying on his stomach on his bed, flipping slowly through a copy of Batman Dudley had dug out for him. Sammy's cradle had been pushed over so that if he needed to be settled, Harry could reach over and take care of him from his bed. Dudley himself was sitting against the only clear spot of wall in Harry and Sammy's room, tossing up his rugby ball and thoughtlessly catching it. It was funny, how he no longer considered the room his own, and how his view of the room had developed from it being his old toy room to the freak's room to Harry's room, and then, with the arrival of Sammy, Harry and Sammy's room.

"What do you think of me?"

"Huh?"

Where he only had some of Harry's attention before, he now had all of it. Harry, startled by the question, had actually sat up and turned to stare at him, bewildered and nervous.

Dudley repeated his question.

"What do you mean, what do I think of you?"

The other boy's eyes had grown squinty with wariness.

"I mean, tell me what you think I'm like. You're the only person who knows me, who has known me my entire life. Mum and Dad, they think they know me, but it's like they only want to know the me when I'm the guy they want me to be." He stopped tossing the ball and set it down on the floor next to him. "I'm not always that guy, and I think you know that."

Harry remained silent, continuing to stare at back at Dudley.

"So I want you to tell me what you think of me, because I really want to know what you really think about me."

His words hung in the air for a while, and the only thing that moved or made noise in the room for the next couple of minutes was Sammy, who was playing a game all on his own with his blanket and pillow in his crib.

"You really want to know?" Harry finally asked quietly, "Even the stuff you might not want to hear?"

"That's what I do want to hear."

His expression grew suspicious before he asked, "You're not gonna punch me out or something if I say something that upsetting, are you?"

"I swear I won't."

"You know I'm really going out on a limb here, taking you at your word."

Dudley grunted in agreement.

"Well then." The younger boy sighed. "That's kind of a hard question. I mean, for the greater part of my life you've been this enormous, spoiled tosser who bullied me and pretty much ensured my childhood before Hogwarts was spent friendless and in constant fear of you and your group of bullies."

The blond boy winced guiltily. Harry paused as well, watching him closely, trying to gauge what the likelihood of getting hit now was. To set him at ease, he resumed his ball tossing from earlier. It finally worked because the silence was eventually broken as Harry cleared his throat to continue.

"Things have changed though. I met bigger, more spoiled tossers than you at school. And I stopped being scared of you. Because in the bigger picture of my life, a bully like you was nothing compared to every life threatening thing I have to deal with yearly."

For a moment, Dudley felt insulted, but then remember his life didn't revolve around making Harry or anyone terrified of him anymore. He really didn't want people to be scared of him. That wasn't the way you made real friends with people. And it obviously hadn't done any good for his cousin.

"But that wasn't the only thing. Things for me have changed, and I think you changed too. I don't know what happened to you, what's made you different, because you're not so bad anymore. And I definitely don't hate you. I was on the fence for a long time on whether I hated you, but now I'm sure I don't. I'm not sure if I like you, but maybe someday I will. If you keep sharing your comic books, and not beating me up, and covering for me with your mum so I can spend time with Sammy," His cousin reached out to the baby, through the bars, and placed his hand open palmed on the baby's back, "I could probably give liking you shot."

Well.

That was honestly much more than he could have ever expected. After his break with Piers, he'd expected Harry to keep up with his side of the mutual dislike they'd had all of those years. And he knew that he'd deserve everything his cousin would say, and do. But for Harry to still be holding out the chance for... something. Whatever he was offering Dudley, well, Dudley would be stupid not accept it.

"Sounds good."

And it was, if the cautiously optimistic smile quirking the corners of either of their lips was any indication. Dudley continued his ball tossing, Harry resumed reading, and Sammy continued to nap, completely oblivious of them both.

He could feel it. The moment Harry came home for break the summer of 97, more so than he ever had before. There was always something hanging over Harry. Something heavy. Heavier than anything Dudley had ever and would ever have to experience. The hardest part of his life was being a good son, a good older brother, and an average student. Some magical lunatic who hated people who didn't have magic killed Harry's parents. (Harry had told him the truth one night when they were trying to sooth Sammy to sleep and Dudley asked if Harry remembered the car crash.) And the guy who killed his parents was trying really hard to kill Harry and all of his friends too even though they did have magic. And the thing was, for some stupid reason, it was all up to Harry to fight the bugger. Dudley still couldn't understand why it had to be Harry.

They'd sort of fought about that, the night Harry told the family that they were being relocated .His mum and dad had thrown a fit, yelling about how they had to up and leave their lives for an indefinite amount of with no promise of return or compensation for their suffering. It was stupid to be complaining when someone was coming to try and kill them. Didn't they realize that they weren't safe if they stayed? That Sammy was going to be in danger if they didn't let the magic people protect them? He'd voiced those thoughts, which had plunged the entire family room into silence as his parents gawped at him and Harry gave him a grateful nod. It was only after that that Dudley had asked Harry what comics he wanted to pack for himself, that Harry had told him he wasn't going to be going with them, so he shouldn't take any. Dudley had been confused, and then irritated, and finally really mad.

Harry had said the family was being moved. Harry was part of the family. So why wasn't he coming with them? Sammy was going to miss him. He was going to miss him if he went away.

He didn't cry. He didn't throw a tantrum. He avoided Harry.

That was, until, those people showed up. They'd come to take them away, and leave Harry behind. His parents complained all the away over to the car, glowering at the man and woman who put their luggage into the trunk. Their glowers only deepened when they noticed how the trunk, despite being too small to fit everything, took all of their bags without any obvious signs of cramming or shoving. Harry stood alone watching them go. Watching Sammy, really. Sammy, a toddler now, was squalling in his mum's arms, reaching for Harry and not understanding why he wasn't getting handed over. He cried and cried, for his "Hawwi" and to be "'Et do". Unable to stand another minute of it, Dudley marched over to his mum and held out his arms to her, silently asking her to give him Sammy. She looked like she was going to refuse, like she knew exactly what he was going to do, but eventually handed Sammy over to him, resigned. Sammy stopped crying almost instantly, but he still kept trying to reach for Harry.

"I know buddy, I know," Dudley whispered to him, patting his back.

Crossing the lawn, he stopped in front of Harry. His cousin looked stunned, but he took the toddler anyway. They said very quiet goodbyes to each other, his cousin and brother. It was surprising how quiet and calm Sammy was after all that screaming. Harry just always seemed to have that effect on him. Solemnly, Harry handed Sammy back to Dudley. Sammy went with little protest, something Dudley was thankful for. The two stood there, no longer boys but not quite men yet, the child between them. Dudley raised one hand and placed it on Harry's shoulder.

"You're not a waste of space Harry," he said evenly, "You're our brother." Harry's head, which had been down, shot up now, his green eyes wide with wonder. "You're my brother."

"Dudley, I..."

"Save it." Dudley gave him a light punch on the arm. "I left you all of the X-Men, and some of the Batmans. Wherever you're going, you better take good care of them. I expect you to return them next time I see you." The warning tone in his voice softened the slightest. "They're all going to be Sammy's someday after all."

"Yeah. Of course," Harry choked out, "I will."

"Good." He turned away and gave a backwards wave. "See you around Potter."

"You too Big D."

That was the last time he saw Harry for a very long time.

"Hey, no fair!" the little boy whined, "You said I could watch Star Wars before I went to bed!"

"Yes Samuel, but I didn't say you could watch the entire trilogy," their mum said, tweaking his nose.

"Mom! Don't do that!" The boy scowled, covering his nose with both hands.

"Ah, come on mum. It's winter hols, let him enjoy a late night."

Both the boy and his mother turned to see a tall broad shouldered man standing in the door way.

"Dudley!" Sammy cried, off like and shot, and hurtled straight into the man's knees.

His mother wasn't far behind, throwing her arms as far around him as best she could manage, pressing kisses to his cheek on tiptoe.

"When did you get here?" his mum fussed, "Sam and I could've picked you up at the train station."

"Don't worry about it mum. I didn't want to trouble you."

"Nonsense, it's no trouble, sweetie," she kissed his cheek one more time before backing away, "Now get inside and get warm while I go get you something to eat."

"No sweets mum, remember, wrestlers have to eat fit to maintain wait!" he called after her.

"Dudley, did you get me any presents?" his little leg starfish chirped, "Did you? Did you? Did you?"

"Of course bud," Dudley reassured him.

He leaned down and with one arm, hefted the boy up and onto his shoulder. Sammy squealed with joy as he was swung around and giggled as hung upside down. The boy continued to badger Dudley to show him his present, and finally, they compromised and Dudley showed him his present, still wrapped. Though he wasn't allowed to open it, it was easy to guess what it was.

"It's a comic book!" Sammy exclaimed, "It's Captain America right? It's gotta be Captain America!"

It was still hilarious to Dudley that Sammy's favorite comic book hero was Captain America. Their family was British, but Sammy had only lived there a couple of years before they'd been moved to America for protection. Most of his life was spent in America, so it wasn't so strange for him to identify more with the Yanks. But it was more than a laugh watching his mum's lips pinch and his dad's face go red when Sammy ran around wearing his cowl and his plastic shield on his arm singing, "When Captain America throws his mighty shield!" Dudley still had a soft spot for Captain Britain in his heart, but he understood the appeal of Captain America.

Mum finally shooed Sammy to bed, and he spent an hour catching her up on what he'd been doing at university over the left over roast and vegetables she'd warmed up for him. He excused himself once he was done, distracting her with the dishes she still needed to finish up, and went upstairs to check in on Sammy. Unsurprisingly, he was awake under the covers with a torch, reading something. Quietly, he tiptoed over and tugged the blankets down. There was a piece of parchment paper clutched in the hand not holding the torch. His lips were pulled in a frustrated frown. He looked up at Dudley.

"He sent some more letters. I had to hide them till now."

"Ah."

"Can you help me read them?" Sammy bit his lip. "You're the only person I can ask for help with them."

"I know Sammy. I know."

Together, they unfolded the letter, and began to read. Sammy slowly read the words out loud, stumbling, but refusing to quit. Dudley was there to help him understand the words he didn't know and sound out the ones he had trouble on. Soon they finished one letter, and then another. By that time, Sammy was too tired to read anymore. Sleepily, he made Dudley promise to read the rest with him tomorrow. He gave his promise, and tucked the boy in. Then he went downstairs, grabbed his bag and went over to where the Christmas tree was. Digging through his bag, he found and placed the ones for his mum and dad under the tree. Next he placed the comic book under it. And then finally, he pulled out one last present, another for Sammy, wrapped in green, its bow scarlet and gold. Signed on the card was this:

To: Sammy and Dudley
From: H

Putting it under the tree, he stood and went up stairs to go back to sleep.

Nana: So I really am going through with this story. I think I honestly loved this chapter more than the first. There's something about Dudley. Reminds me of my little brother who strangely enough is quite the muse for my writing sometimes. I can say this right now, if this story continues, Dudley will definitely be a more forefront character in Sam's world, as much as Harry will be. And if you enjoyed this view into Dudley, I suggest you read A Hero by Celebony. It's the best Harry Potter fanfiction I've ever read, showing Dudley growing as person. It does more than this chapter could ever do to explore Dudley.

And as for the comic books? Well, Sam needed to get his nerdiness from somewhere. That and my recent, unholy addiction to Marvel is driving this a lot. Also this pic I found somewhere with Sam and Blaine arguing over who the coolest Avenger is. Great inspiration there. Hope you guys are having wonderful winter hols!