Hand outstretched, his face very warm, he muttered, "see you, Harry."

"Yeah …" Harry seemed to hesitate. "Maybe."

*
Dudley hated writing Christmas cards. He hated anything that involved writing, but the process of writing out the same words over and over, not to mention looking up addresses and licking those damn envelopes, was so tedious that he often left it as late as he possibly could – which was to say, as late as his wife would allow.

"Almost done?"

And she still checked to make sure he was doing it.

"Almost," said Dudley. He tossed the envelope he'd just addressed onto the slowly growing pile, flexed his cramping fingers, and consulted his list. Under Aunt Marge's name, which he now crossed off, only one remained.

Karen, peering over his shoulder, read aloud, "Harry. Who's Harry?"

"My cousin," Dudley said, reaching for another card and flipping the address book to P.

His wife frowned.

"You've never mentioned a cousin."

"Haven't I?" he said vaguely, concentrating more on the card. His hand hurt. He really hated writing.

"No. I thought you didn't have any other aunts or uncles."

"I don't."

"Then how could you have a cousin?"

"Oh. Right. They died." 'Christmas' was such a long word. "Harry was only a baby so he came to live with us –"

"He lived with you?" Karen sounded amazed: Dudley, still focusing on the card, could nonetheless feel her staring at him. "But – he wasn't at the wedding! How come I've never heard of him?"

"I dunno …"

From Dudley. There. He slipped the card into an envelope, wrote out Harry's address as quickly as he could, and pressed a stamp into the top right hand corner.

"Done," he said, pleased.

"You send him a Christmas card, but you've never once mentioned him!" Karen exclaimed, ignoring his accomplishment. "Is this the only contact you have with him?"

Dudley nodded.

"Where does he live?"

"Er –" He glanced at the envelope. "Herefordshire."

"What does he do?"

"I dunno."

"Is he married?"

"Er … dunno."

His wife gazed at him in utter incomprehension.

"How can you not know?" she cried. "He's your cousin! You lived in the same house! How can you not have thought about him?"

This one Dudley knew the answer to, but he had a feeling she wouldn't be happy with it.

"I just didn't," he said, simply, and that was all there was to it.

Well. That wasn't quite all.

Dudley had not seen Harry for ten years, since the Dursleys had left Privet Drive and Harry had gone off to do – something. Since then, things had changed significantly for Dudley. The life he led now was simple. He liked things simple.

That was part of the reason he'd tucked Harry, and everything to do with him, into the back of his mind after returning to Privet Drive years before. Back then, he'd allowed himself to wonder – the wizards said the war was over, that Harry had saved them all, and nothing else – but life went on, and Dudley had happily gone with it. His parents never mentioned Harry again, and it was possible that, given time, Dudley might have forgotten about his cousin entirely – if it weren't for the Christmas cards.

The first one, the year the Dursleys had returned to Little Whinging, had arrived in the dead of night with an owl that startled Dudley horribly by tapping loudly on his bedroom window. Very confused, he'd torn it open to find a simple message – to Dudley, happy Christmas, from Harry – and an address, somewhere in Devon, scrawled on the inside of the card.

It had taken him the rest of the night and the next morning to decide what to do. On his way home later in the day, he had stopped to buy a card and a stamp, sat on the wall outside to write it, and posted it straight off so his parents would never know what he had done. Harry's card was hidden, in a stroke of rare genius that surprised even himself, in the bedroom his cousin had left bare last summer: the only place in the house he knew his mum and dad would never go.

Once the card was sent, he forgot all about it.

By nature, Dudley was not one to dwell on things. He moved out, got a job, a wife, and a family, and Harry became a fact of the past, rather than a person who was still out there, living in the same country, perhaps with his own family. The Christmas cards were received and written on autopilot: they were lumped in with those to work colleagues and old friends and not once did Harry cross his mind for more than a fleeting second. It was like a wall had been subconsciously erected in his mind: or, rather, like that part of his life had been put in the cupboard under the stairs, and subsequently forgotten about …

But now the door had been opened. Although Karen was soon occupied by other things and abandoned her line of questioning, Dudley found himself turning her words over in his mind for the rest of the day. Was Harry married? What did he do? Several times, he glanced at the telephone, before remembering that wizards, even if they did have phones, were probably ex-directory.

He tried to put it out of his head as he loaded the dishwasher after dinner, then settled down with Karen and the kids to watch some celebrity game show, but he couldn't focus. He kept thinking about the last time he'd seen Harry. They'd shaken hands … what would happen if they were to meet again?

By the time he and Karen went to bed, he was writing a letter in his head, asking Harry if he would be open to the possibility of a meeting.

The next morning, he woke to find the other side of the bed empty and the house quiet. It took him a moment to remember that Karen had taken the boys out to buy presents for their friends (and, Dudley assumed, for him).
He got up, dressed, and went down to the kitchen to fix himself breakfast. He had just finished when the sound of the post arriving came from the hall, and Dudley, brushing crumbs from his shirt, went to get it.

He bent to pick up the pile, then stopped dead.

The first, square envelope – a Christmas card - was crisp and white, but the stamp affixed to it was wonky, and the handwriting in which Dudley's name and address were written was an untidy scrawl. Familiar, of course – he saw it every year.

He ripped away the envelope and stared, dazedly, at Harry's card. The message inside hadn't changed since the very first one.

Dudley was not usually an impulsive man, but at that moment he was struck by a sudden compulsion so strong that his mind was wiped blank but for this one thought. He moved as if controlled by an external force: shoving the card in his pocket, he grabbed his car keys and jacket and headed straight out of the front door without hesitating.

The address Harry had sent several years earlier was not especially far, but it seemed that way to Dudley, who – now he had set determinedly off on this journey – was keen to get on with it. He didn't want to have time to wonder what might happen. This was it: no turning back.

It was late morning by the time he reached the area in which Harry lived, and while that was easy enough to find thanks to his satnav – though he was prone to getting short with the patronising female voice – the house itself proved more elusive. Finally, the car climbed up a steep incline in a small, picturesque village, on the edge of which was (he hoped) Harry's home. He parked clumsily on the sloping driveway, got out of the car, and stood back to survey the place.

It looked like it had once been a barn, since converted. A cat sat washing itself on the doorstep: it eyed Dudley balefully as he made his way to the front door, which had flaking yellow paint.

He took a deep breath and knocked.

A shout echoed from somewhere inside the house, followed by footsteps, which grew louder and louder, until the door flew open and Dudley found himself looking down at a short woman with startlingly bright red hair.

"Hello," she said, slowly and warily, squinting up at him. "Can I help you?"

"Er – yeah," said Dudley. "Uh. I was looking for Harry Potter ..?"

"Is he expecting you?"

From the tone of her voice, Dudley gathered that she thought it was unlikely.

"Uh. No. I was just … passing by … and I thought I'd drop in …" She was frowning: he sensed that she might shut the door in his face at any second. "I'm his cousin!" he rushed on in a sudden stroke of inspiration, and at that, the woman's brown eyes widened: they flickered over his face, scrutinising him, sizing him up.

There was a moment's silence, then she said, "you'd better come in."

Dudley's heart was thumping. Hiding his clammy hands in his pockets, he followed her into the house.

She led him through a warm hallway where the walls were lined with framed photographs, and Dudley, looking curiously at them, blinked – were they moving? She was marching along too briskly for him to get a good look, but he was fairly certain a person in one photo had just waved at him …

He shook his head sharply and followed the woman through a door at the end of the hall, which led to a roomy kitchen. It had a high ceiling, with wooden beams that cast criss-crossing shadows in the golden sunlight filtering through a large window which faced out onto a garden. A long, scrubbed pine table stood in the middle of the room, strewn with papers, mugs, and general mess: yet more photographs clustered the mantelpiece of an old-fashioned fireplace, and there was an owl asleep on a perch by the door. It was by no means the only strange thing Dudley could see: a quill was scribbling on a long piece of parchment trailing off the end of the table, the dishes in the sink appeared to be scrubbing themselves and although nobody was holding it, a brush swept busily across the floor, a dustpan following in its wake.

As he gaped, gobsmacked, the back door crashed open and two small boys cannoned noisily into the kitchen.

"MUUUUUM!"

"MUM IT WASN'T ME –"

The red-haired woman stopped in front of them, hands on hips, and for half a beat, the boys fell silent. Then -

"MUM, JAMES –"

"I DIDN'T DO IT!" shouted the stockier of the two. Dudley couldn't see their faces, but unlike their mother, they both sported jet black hair. "I didn't, Al's LYING – who's that?"

He had spotted Dudley. The other boy looked at where his brother was pointing, and Dudley felt as if the floor had been pulled out from under his feet.

It was Harry.

Of course, it wasn't, but – the similarity was astonishing. The boy didn't wear glasses, and there was no scar on his forehead, but everything else, from the untidy shock of hair Vernon had hated so much, to the knobbly knees Dudley had made fun of, was identical.

He knew, suddenly, somehow, that coming here had been the right thing to do.

"It's rude to stare!" the boys' mother told them sharply, but they ignored her.

"Who are you?" asked the taller one.

"I'm Dudley," said Dudley.

"Why are y-"

"It isn't any of your business, James, so hush," said the woman firmly. "I want you two to stay right here until I come back and no fighting, is that clear?"

The boys, still goggling at the visitor, muttered acquiescence.

"Good. Come with me," she said to Dudley, leading him to the back door. "He's out here."

The garden was rather overgrown and bore obvious traces of children, but still looked attractive under a light covering of snow. There was a rickety old shed at the foot of the lawn. When they reached it, the woman, shivering slightly, tapped once on the door.

"Harry, there's someone here to see you ..."

There was a pause, and then the door opened and Harry Potter appeared.

Dudley stared at him.

Harry stared back.

"Dudley?"

The shed, to Dudley's astonishment, turned out to be far larger on the inside, even accommodating a small, sagging sofa. There were yet more strange things in here: the subjects of the childish drawings papering the walls were moving, as were the green-clad women in a faded poster above the sofa, which bore the caption Holyhead Harpies 2001-2. A large, gleaming motorbike leant against a wall in the corner.

"Cool bike," said Dudley in surprise. "That yours?"

Harry didn't look up. "Yeah."

He was crouching over some long planks of wood, frowning as he twirled a hammer in one hand. Dudley guessed that he didn't really know how to deal with his unexpected visitor: he'd let him into the shed after the red-haired woman had tactfully made a swift exit, but now an awkward silence had fallen.

In any case, it was giving Dudley a chance to study his cousin closely. It seemed incredibly bizarre that just a few hours ago he'd been having breakfast at home, when now he stood in Harry's shed. They hadn't seen each other for over ten years. Since then, Harry had gone off and done – supposedly – great things, magical things, in a world Dudley knew very little of, but here - hunkered down on the floor, in muddy old jeans and a lumpy knitted jumper – he seemed remarkably normal. Just a regular bloke, a husband and father, like -

Well, like Dudley.

"So … how've you been?"

It took a moment to register that Harry was talking to him.

"Er, good," he replied self-consciously. "Good. Great. How about you?"

Harry straightened up, wiping his hands on his jeans. "Yeah, good," he echoed, and squinted at Dudley, who saw that the round glasses and lightning scar were the same as ever.

"You're probably wondering why I'm here."

"It did cross my mind," Harry agreed. "I dunno about you, but usually when my estranged cousins turn up at my house after years and years I tend to think there's a reason for it."

Recognising the characteristic sarcasm, Dudley said nothing.

"You're not in any kind of … trouble, are you?" Fleeting unease crossed Harry's face. "I reckon it would have to be pretty serious for you to come to me, but –"

"No. Nothing like that," said Dudley hurriedly. "I just … I just thought I should."

"You should?" repeated Harry, dark eyebrows contracting.

"No … not should … I dunno. I didn't really think about it. My wife was asking about you yesterday and I realised I didn't know anything about you and then your card came …"

He was making a real mess of this: he should have planned it better – or at all. The truth was he didn't really have a good reason at all for appearing on Harry's doorstep; it had been a whim, a stupid whim, and he'd never felt so confused in his life.

"You do know stuff about me," said Harry, who had listened to his explanation with a faintly quizzical expression. "But I'm guessing you didn't tell your wife the biggest thing."

"That you're a – a -" Dudley swallowed. "A wizard?"

Harry looked slightly impressed.

"Yeah. You probably could tell her. I don't think that breaks the Statute of Secrecy."

Dudley didn't have a clue what he was talking about, but nodded anyway. "I didn't say anything about it. She asked if you were married and what you did and I didn't know that."

"So you drove all this way to ask me?"

"Not exactly … I dunno," Dudley muttered. "Not just that. I wanted to know if … if you'd want to see me."

Harry had turned back to the strips of wood on the ground. Kneeling down again, he picked up a crumpled diagram and examined it. The frown reappeared on his forehead, and he didn't answer Dudley, who wasn't sure he'd been heard.

"What are you making?" he asked, raising his voice.

"A sledge. For the kids. I'd have done it the norm- with magic, or bought one, but apparently Timmy-from-school's dad built his sledge completely from scratch and I've been requested – ordered, actually - to do the same."

Dudley hesitated, then said, "I've made stuff for my kids. A tree-house in the garden, that kind of thing. I'm not bad with woodwork."

He paused.

"I could help. If you liked."

Harry looked at him, his expression unreadable. Then, without saying a word, he held out a hammer, and Dudley took it.

*

"Are you still boxing? Or did you give that up?"

The tea that Harry's wife – Ginny – had brought out was pouring itself, but Dudley tried not to look at that as he answered Harry's question.

"I carried on for a few years after school. Did pretty well, but I messed up my shoulder before too long and had to quit. I got offered a job as a boxing coach at another school, though."

"You're doing that now?"

"Yeah. At the school my boys will be going to in a few years. They're not really into it, but Owen - my oldest - he plays football."

"Yeah?" Harry sounded genuinely interested as he passed Dudley a nail. "My lot are obsessed with Quidditch, but that's no surprise. My daughter's already set on going professional."

A mere hour ago, that statement would have befuddled Dudley, but he now knew that Quidditch was a wizarding sport, and that Ginny Potter had played it professionally before retiring to become a sports journalist.

The conversation had not been non-stop as they worked on the sledge: occasionally they had fallen into a fairly companionable silence, broken only by Harry swearing under his breath as he hit himself in the thumb with his hammer.

Dudley was surprised to find, after some time had passed, that he felt comfortable working alongside his cousin and chatting lightly. After what had happened at Privet Drive, it could well have been very different. Harry would have been excused for hating his guts.

But he didn't seem to.

"No offence, Dud," he said when Dudley hesitantly put the question to him, "but I'm far too busy to waste my time hating you."

"What about Mum and Dad?"

Harry shrugged. "I don't really care either way. I doubt they'd be too keen to meet up and talk about the good old days –" a faint grin – "and I'm fine with that."

"But you don't mind me showing up?" asked Dudley unsurely.

"Of course not," said Harry, sounding surprised. "Honestly, Dudley, it's like – you're a different person. I've got nothing against you. After all, I sent the first Christmas card, didn't I?"

"Why did you do that? I mean – you sent it at night. By … by owl. Why not by normal post?"

"Because I thought your mum and dad might see it, and they wouldn't be happy. And I …" He seemed to think carefully about his next words. "I didn't know how much you'd been told, I wanted to let you know that I was ali- all right. If you cared. Which I thought you might."

"Yeah, I did."

A sudden thought struck Dudley, along with a memory: 'See you, Harry.' 'Yeah … maybe.'

"When we left," he said slowly, "and I said see you, and you said maybe – was that because you didn't think you'd … survive?"

It took Harry a long time to answer; he fiddled absently with a nail, rolling it between his fingertips.

Eventually, he said, "Yeah."

Dudley spluttered in disbelief.

"You – and you still went and did – whatever it was? Even though you knew you might not make it?"

"It wasn't really my choice," said Harry guardedly. "I was the only one who could do it. And yeah, I knew I might not survive."

"Why didn't you tell us – me – that?"

He laughed.

"C'mon, Dudley. What was I supposed to say? No, actually, you won't see me, I'll probably have copped it. That wouldn't have … it wasn't the right time or place. You didn't need to know."

"I would have wanted to know," said Dudley strongly. "I did care, you know! I told you, you saved my life –"

"Not really –"

"And you could have – you could have done something horrible to me, after all I did to you. But you didn't. And you got people to keep us safe that year." He blinked at his shoes. "You're … that was decent. Really decent."

Harry opened his mouth to say something, then shook his head and closed it again.

"I suppose," Dudley mumbled, "I didn't think about you all these years because it would've reminded me of what I was like."

"Yeah," said Harry, "was like." He sighed. "Look, it's all in the past now. I promise you I don't think about it. The reason I never got in touch with you properly was I thought you'd be leading a nice normal life and I didn't want to interfere in it."

Uncertain of how to reply to that, Dudley focused instead on the sledge, and was surprised to see that it was looking fairly finished.

"Hey – look!"

Harry's eyebrows shot up.

"That looks like a pretty decent sledge to me."

"Nice work," said Dudley, holding out his hand, palm out. Grinning, Harry slapped his own hand against it.

"Nice teamwork," he corrected. "When are you heading back? You could come in for some food, if you wanted."

"I should probably be getting back soon …" Dudley glanced at his watch, and was thrown by how much time had passed. "My wife will be home and she doesn't know I came here." He looked at Harry, suddenly awkward again. "If you're ever down our way, you know … you could drop in."

"Thanks," said Harry, grinning more widely. "I'll remember that."

Dudley got to his feet, stretching, and Harry followed him to the shed door.

"Have a good Christmas. I'll … I'll see you?"

"Yeah," Harry said. "Definitely. Happy Christmas, Big D."

I apologise sincerely for the rubbishness of these endings. Not my strong point ...