Scars Ch. 2: Dudley

By: Eartha (1/31/09)

Disclaimer: Harry Potter and co. are the property of JK Rowling.

(Summer)

Hearing a loud sigh, Dudley looked up from his paper with a smirk hovering on his lips. He knew that sound. "What's the matter, honey?" he asked his oldest daughter. Her cherubic face was squeezed into a pitiful pout, as her bright blue eyes stared at him from under hooded lids. He knew that face. His daughter was not happy.

"What's the point?!" she whined, stomping her foot for emphasis.

"What's the point of what?" he countered, still smiling at his daughter's mild distress. It was not unheard of for her to throw a tantrum. He had to admit to himself, if not to his wife, that he had spoiled his first-born rotten.

Another stomp. She was becoming impatient. Again, he shook his head. With a deep sigh, he asked again, "What's the matter, honey?"

With pouted lips, she petulantly cried, "It's this book!" His eyes turned to the object in her hands. With its muted cover, it was unlike her usual reading. He could usually spot her books from a mile away. The fairytale romances she preferred were almost always lurid shades of pink with big scripted letters.

It must be a required summer book.

He held out his hand, a request to see exactly what about the book was causing her so much distress. However, he sincerely doubted he'd know anything about it. When the books came from her school, he rarely ever did. Glancing down at the cover, his hand froze. His breathing shortened to small gasps of air.

"Scars: The Life of Harry Potter"

His daughter, oblivious to her father's strange behavior, rambled on, complaining about the book. He didn't hear her. He couldn't believe it. It couldn't be HIM, not the Harry he had known. Who would have written a book about him?

He hesitated. Memories, long ago buried, resurfaced to paint a different picture. There had always been a hullabaloo around Harry, hadn't there? There had been something about him...

He shook his head in incredulous denial. Surely, there was nothing important enough to write a book about him!

Guilt, a heavy, familiar emotion clutched at his chest. He pushed it away - it was nothing. It had always been nothing.

Slowly, Dudley's hearing cleared. He shook his head again to clear away the strange thoughts. It must be nothing. He turned back to his daughter, a vague, if not somewhat strained smile on his face.

Taking a big breath, she blew her bangs away from her forehead in frustration and threw the book on the floor in front of Dudley. Stomping her foot again, she cried, "What's the point if he just dies in the end?!"

Dudley froze. His hearing became muffled, his eyesight narrowed into darkness. His daughter called his name…. And then, nothing.

(Winter)

Dudley entered the small graveyard, its well-kept paths and trimmed hedges giving it a park-like feel. He hesitated. It felt like Privet Drive, too perfect, an attempt to hide a sordid truth.

(A memory) A small boy, sunburned and thirsty, weeds a garden. He stands in front of him, holding a large, cold glass of fresh-squeezed lemonade.

Grunts, a weed holds tight to the earth. The boy pulls harder and flies on to his back, panting from the strain and exhaustion.

He stares down at the boy, sneers, and slowly pours to glass of cold lemonade on the ground beside him.

Feeling a tight pressure on his hand, Dudley looked down to see his impatient daughter wriggling in annoyance. He shook his head to clear the images, but a vice like grip remained around his heart, mimicking his daughter's hand, clenching and squeezing. He didn't want to walk any further. And yet…

His daughter pulled him forward, making his decision for him. In a few steps at the end of the path, he saw it, a monument to a hero. A man, close to his own age, was kneeling at the tomb. A child hung reluctantly behind him, slowly inching away.

Seeing the movement, the kneeling man called back to the boy, "James, don't go far!"

His daughter perked up at the sound, "James?!" She smiled. The boy smiled back, the light of recognition in his eyes. His daughter had found a schoolmate it seemed. She ran towards the boy. Dudley let her go without protest. She didn't know. She wouldn't understand.

How could she? She knew nothing of the boy who used to live with her father in a small quiet house on Privet Drive….

His eyes wandered across the statue of the familiar stranger. Wild hair, round glasses, solemn face. His arms were raised in a protective stance, as if to ward away a great evil.

Walking home through the tunnel. Darkness. A chill that reaches his bones. He stops, unable to move on. Pain, screams in the dark… "Dudley, get away!" "Run!" The world threatens to dissolve. A voice brings him back. "Dudley! Dudley Dudley…"

He shook his head, unwilling to dwell on those memories of long ago.

Instead he stared at the kneeling stranger, wondering who he could be. Who else would come to His grave on such a cold winter day? The stranger's long blonde hair and sharp features were familiar, but he could not place the man's face. He searched his memories, but could bring nothing up but a blank.

"How did you know him?" the stranger softly asked, startling Dudley from his thoughts.

Dudley stared back somewhat uncomfortably at him, wondering why the man would care.

"You don't seem like the usual visitor", he clarified, partly understanding Dudley's hesitance to answer. The man turned his head to stare, his grey eyes pierced into Dudley's as if they could see straight through him. "Everyone else…they always try to take a piece of him." The man turned his head back, his own gaze fixed on the statue. "A blade of grass, a picture, anything to say they were here. And yet, you hang back….And so, I ask, how did you know him?"

Know him? Dudley never knew Harry Potter. He turned to stare at the statue. Certainly not THIS Harry Potter.

Once, he knew of a boy, small and fragile. He knew of cries in the dark and hungry sighs. He knew yelps of pain. He knew…nothing. Because to him, back then, HE, the boy in the cupboard, had been nothing.

And yet, this frozen man, the statue, staring back at him now was certainly not a nothing. This man, it seemed, had been a someone.

Dudley closed his eyes in shame. He couldn't even think of back then without this pain, without this knowledge of what had been. He clenched his fists. So much pain… there had been so much pain, for no reason at all.

Turning his head away, away from the statue, away from the stranger. Away from himself. He replied, "You are mistaken, I didn't know him…"

Grey eyes searched his figure, as if looking for the truth. Dudley, avoiding the man's gaze, averted his eyes to his fisted hands, their strength, his pride and joy, suddenly a disgusting thing.

Breathing a deep sigh, he released the anger, the self-loathing. His body deflated until it was but a fraction of its former size. He looked back at the stranger who still stared, as if waiting for the end of his answer.

"I didn't know HIM" his head jerked towards the statue without looking at it. Silence stretched. Still the stranger waited.

"I didn't know him." Dudley softly repeated himself.

He stared at his fisted hands, and saw only blood and hate and anger. A different person, but still the same. Slowly, he lowered his fists, and continued, "…but, I did know his fear."

He walked towards the statue, and the man.

"His pain."

One step forward.

"His cries."

He was close enough to the statue to touch it. He reached up but stilled his hand as the man next to him stared him down, as if daring him to do it.

He retracted his hand. The man nodded his head, as if he expected his reaction. As if he knew.

"I reveled in them all." Dudley was surprised to feel tears fall from his eyes. Only a few at first, they began to rain down his face, a rivulet that pooled at the base of the statue.

"And now?" The man asked, his voice quiet, his eyes distant.

Dudley looked around. He saw his daughter, his beautiful, vibrant daughter. What could have been? If not for this someone whom he had thought had been a nothing?

He reached into his coat, and brought out a slim volume. The pages were worn. He had read it many times, and he still could not believe the truth of what HIS life had been.

Slowly, he shook his head and gently placed the book at the statue's feet. An offering, a token of his understanding. Finally.

"And now," he said resolutely, staring at the book on the ground. Again, he clenched his fists. But this time not in hate. Not in anger. Never again. This time, he clenched his fists in silent resolution.

"And now," he quietly repeated, "I know his scars…and they have become mine."

Slowly, he turned and walked away, calling his daughter to his side. He clutched her hand, his body shaking. Concerned, she turned to him to ask what was wrong, but he said nothing. Instead, he pulled her to him in a bear of a hug as they walked away together.

The wind blew, whipping long blond hair into the stranger's eyes. The pages of the book turned in an arc, flipping the book to its back cover. The muted tones of the binding highlighted, in stark contrast, a large picture. It was a photo of a man, with long, almost white hair. His demeanor was solemn, dark, sad.

The stranger approached the book, and in turn, the photo stared out. Grey eyes met grey eyes.

"Father!" the boy called, breaking the stranger from his reverie. "Father," the boy called again, gently. "It's time to go."

The stranger said nothing, only nodded his head and stood to leave. He reached, but could not touch the statue. He never could.

He turned to go, but did not move forward. Instead, he closed his fist and stared far away. The wind whipped around him, chilling him, making his body ache. He clutched his body tight to ward away the cold. The contours of his body were unnatural, bumps and ridges that no normal human torso should have.

He was repulsed by them. But still, he clutched tighter, wrapping his arms in a vice-like grip. His fingers grasped his sides, searching. There, he felt them. The fine material of his shirt could not hide the thin, raised lines.

His body loosened, the taunt chords of his muscles relaxing into fluid strength. He nodded his head, he knew, he understood. Staring ahead, he watched the specks of the man and his daughter leaving the small plot.

He turned to his son. His son's wild, curly hair, so like his mother's, whipped in the wind. His deep brown eyes plead with his father, asking him to go. It's time.

Another nod, this time in acknowledgment of the statue behind him.

"As they are mine, my friend. As they are mine."