Title: Parallel

Disclaimer: Despite sleepless nights working on this, I earned no money from this shameless fanfiction based on JKR's work. That's alright; I earned something that money can't buy.

Pairings: Draco/Harry, Dudley/OFC

Rating: T (because, sigh, no smut is allowed)

Warnings: My attempt to discuss Harry's past in a way that's both sensitive but still fits into the word count constraints (really hard to do both), my first attempt at having a major original character in a story, and a couple of inside jokes that probably only I understand. Also, I wrote this while listening alternatively to Kanye and Panic! at the Disco, so who knows if this turned out weird?

Summary: After all these years, Dudley has finally figured out how to contact Harry, and he just wants to make things right. Harry is nervous about the reunion dinner, but Draco is the best support one can have.

Word Count: 3,288 words of actual story text (I'm so sorry; I wanted to make this a full-bodied story, and Ash said 3,300 was the absolute limit.)

Prompts:

General round prompt: Write about your OTP discovering something. (Well, Draco discovers that Harry has Muggle relatives. I didn't make a huge deal out of it here, but that's what happened.)

-Poor

-Dialogue: "Keep looking at me like that, I dare you."

-Madman

Author's Note: This is my entry for Round 12 of the Quidditch League Fanfiction Competition. (It is also the OTP round, SQUEE. That's why you lovelies get to see some Drarry for once.)

This is the last round for our team before the playoffs, and although I'm fairly confident we'll make it, I'm just going to take this opportunity to say my sappy words, just in case.

Falmouth Falcons, I have been proud to be your Beater 1. I know we had a lot of troubles in the first three or four rounds, but once we finally stabilised, we became one of the strongest teams in the League. We are currently #1 out of thirteen teams, and although we might drop due to our BYE, let me just say it was amazing to have made it up there in the first place, especially when we were #13 for a long time.

I have gotten to know and love you folks, especially as times got rough, and I particularly enjoyed all our silly jokes and outrageous conversations. Thank you so much for cheering me up during all those lonely nights and for overall being supportive. You are the best team one could wish for.

I also want to give especial thanks to MaryRoyale, our Beater 2, for being the one to look over my entry. I actually wrote an entirely different story before this one, and trust me, you do not ever want to see it. It was the worst kind of meaningless angst that makes you want to punch something, and it was the exact opposite of what I wanted. I applaud her for bearing with me and for being honest. It is thanks to her that you have this instead. *squishes her*

I hope you enjoy. :)

Draco held out his arm regally over his eggs and toast as the Prophet owl flew in with the latest edition.

"Hm, let us see," he murmured, retrieving the pages from the owl's talons.

Harry craned his head, but it was hard to see from where he was sitting. "Well? Who won the last Quidditch game?"

Draco flipped the pages. "Mm, you mean the match between the Falcons and the Cannons?"

Harry rolled his eyes. "Obviously."

Draco hummed enigmatically as his eyes scanned the page. "Oh, I shan't tell you; if you really wanted to know, you should have grabbed the newspaper first."

"What!" Harry leapt out of his seat and dove for Draco, who pre-emptively threw himself out of his seat and onto the floor, probably to minimise damage. The two of them wrestled for a few moments, laughing breathlessly, neither of them really caring about the scores.

Just as Harry was squirming his way on top of Draco, however, he heard the flutter of wings above him.

"Oh! Another owl!" He quickly rolled off of Draco and held out his hand for the missive.

Draco gasped softly, still out of breath from their impromptu wrestling. "What sort of parchment is that? It looks strange."

Harry frowned at it, slowly turning it over in his hand. "It's…a Muggle envelope made out of paper. Why would—oh."

He had seen the name.

Mr Dudley Dursley.

"Harry? Why do you look so pale? Harry?"

"I need a moment," he murmured, getting up and moving to sit on the living room couch.

With trembling fingers, he tore open the envelope.

Dear Harry,

I hope this gets to you. My wife's family is of your sort, and they told me that this is how you guys talk, but they're such sodding wankers that I never know if they're taking the piss or not. She tells me it's true, but sometimes she likes to play pranks, too, though at least she can't do that magic stuff. Madmen, all of them. But I love them anyway, if you can believe that.

(Sorry, I'm rambling. Never was good at letters. Damn, wish you had a phone instead, but no, always gotta be difficult when it comes to you. I'm much better on the phone.)

Anyway. I know we didn't have the best childhood together, after all the awful things I did back then. If you hate my guts, I understand. I can't make up for all that. I regret the way we left off, though. We shared a house together all those years, and it just stinks that the last thing I ever said to you was "I don't think you're a waste of space." I could have done better.

So please let me invite you over to our place for dinner next Friday at seven. I can make a mean pot roast, and I'm hoping it'll be a good enough start at an apology. You can bring someone with you if you want, since my wife will also be there.

Hope to hear back from you. If you don't answer in three days, I'll just assume either you didn't get this or you want me to piss off.

Sincerely,

Dudley

Draco was sitting next to him on the couch, leaning his head on Harry's shoulder. Harry absentmindedly stroked his hair, a privilege reserved only for him. He could feel the tension in Draco's forehead and knew he must be full of questions, but he was grateful that Draco was keeping quiet for now. Sometimes that Slytherin tact really came in handy. Or maybe it was just the tact that came with maturity.

Harry sighed and set the letter down.

"It was my cousin Dudley," he explained without preamble. "He's invited us to dinner at his place."

Draco pulled back, raising an eyebrow. "Who is that? I was not aware you had a cousin, Potter."

"Oh, yeah. When I was a child, I lived with my mum's Muggle sister and her family. I don't really talk about it, though, since it never comes up."

Draco frowned. "Ah. That explains your cluelessness about magic when we first met. Were they poor, then?"

Harry furrowed his brows. "Um, not particularly. I'd say middle-class. Why do you ask?"

"Well, the way you looked and dressed back then, of course. You were swallowed up by those horrid clothes, and sometimes it seemed like you were wearing too-saggy pants around your arse—"

"You looked at my arse, even back then?"

Draco blushed and looked away, and Harry relished the sight. Seeing him flustered was too rare an occurrence.

"Shut up," Draco retorted, still looking away a bit. "Do not distract me from my point."

"Which is?"

"You looked poor, as well as malnourished. Why was that, then, if your family was not poor?"

Harry bit his lower lip and looked at his knees. "Let's just say that I wasn't exactly favoured in that household. My aunt grew up hating my mum, and then suddenly I was dumped onto her doorstep, another mouth to feed. Not only that, but they were terrified of the magic that happened around me, since they were Muggles. So…"

"So…?"

Harry cast around in his mind for softer, less startling words, but then he remembered that this was Draco. There was no sugar-coating in their relationship. "So they tried to squash the magic. They locked me in the cupboard when they felt I was misbehaving, they kept me from meals at times, and they always made me wear Dudley's hand-me-downs, not wanting to spend money on me. That didn't stop me from being magical, though, so the joke's on them."

Harry went for a sheepish chuckle here, but Draco was silent. Worried, Harry looked up, only to find Draco's lips pressed in a thin line.

"I see."

Harry sighed. "It's not—I mean, I'm not too torn up about it; most of the time I forget any of that even happened. I'm a wizard now, one who is rich, famous, and dating the sexiest man alive. All that stuff in the past just seems like a bad dream."

Draco gestured at the letter. "That does not look like a dream."

Harry grinned wryly. "Well, I feel less bitter about Dudley. He was a spoiled brat, yeah, but…he got better towards the end. A Dementor came after us once, and I saved him—I think he was grateful for that. When he and his parents had to go to the safe house during the war, he seemed honestly sad to part from me. I'm sure he's alright now."

"And his parents?"

Harry closed his eyes for a moment before opening them again. "I don't know. I don't think I can ever forgive them, not unless they make the effort to be forgiven, and I don't see that happening anytime soon."

Draco nodded. "May I see the letter?"

"Sure." Harry gave it over.

After a few minutes' reading, Draco handed it back. "It does not seem to mention his parents at all. I do find it interesting that he seems to have married a Squib, though. Do you think he met her at the safe house?"

Harry shrugged. "Maybe."

"Will you accept his invite?"

"I don't know. Do you think I should?"

"Only if you want to, Harry. You are the Saviour. You can do anything you want—you are doing me, after all, so I think anything else is possible."

Harry smiled at Draco's haughty affectation. He knew Draco only played it up these days to cheer him up, and it worked bloody well.

"I think I will accept, but only if you go with me."

Draco kissed him. "Good, because I was not planning on letting you face him alone. This saves me a lot of tiresome manipulation."

Harry grinned. "You're such a prat."

"You know it."

Harry swallowed nervously as they stood in front of the address Dudley had given them. Here went nothing. He pressed the doorbell, and Draco reached out and held his hand.

"Hang on," said a lower-pitched female voice, and the staccato sound of footsteps followed.

Then the door flew open, revealing a short, chubby woman with shoulder-length black hair and dark eyes. For a brief moment, Harry wondered if he was looking at a slightly overweight relative of the Black family, but a quick glance at Draco showed that he didn't recognize her at all.

"Well. You must be Harry. Dudley's told me so little about you!" She winked before turning to look at Draco. She froze, her eyes widening.

Draco frowned. "Keep looking at me like that, I dare you."

She shook herself, as if recalling her manners. "No! It's nothing bad, I was just—well, I dunno!"

"Were you expecting Harry to bring a woman?"

She flushed, and Harry felt Draco probably guessed correctly. "N-Nah, I was just surprised he brought someone, that's all." She cleared her throat. "Come on in! Dinner's almost ready; Dudley's just adding the finishing touches."

They entered the doorway and she took their coats. Harry looked around curiously as they approached the living room, wondering what sort of home Dudley would live in.

The walls were white and unremarkable, but there were several photos of him and his wife in various scenic locations, along with incongruous images they must have thought were amusing. Harry could not help but step closer and examine a slightly blurry platypus, pondering why anyone would put that on a wall.

"Did you know that it's a bad idea to pick up a platypus, especially if it's male? I didn't make that mistake, of course, but some other poor soul did, right after I took that picture. Makes me chuckle just thinking about it."

Harry jerked and turned around towards the booming voice.

Dudley had definitely grown up. He towered over Harry, and although he was still enormous, most of his mass was dedicated to muscle rather than fat. His straw-coloured hair was cropped close, and his watery blue eyes gazed steadily and patiently at him, which was the biggest change of all. Harry could never have imagined a universe in which Dudley was patient.

"Dudley," he said, confirming to himself that it really was him.

"Harry. It's great to see you again." Dudley pulled him into a crushing hug.

Harry gasped for breath, not having been hugged like this since Hagrid, and he looked over Dudley's shoulder in an appeal for help. Draco was busy making small talk with Dudley's wife, however, and merely smirked at him when their eyes met. Harry made a quick note to punish him later.

Thankfully, the hug did not last too long. Dudley gave him a final pat on the back and moved away. "Come on. Dinner's ready. You can admire our photography skills later."

Dinner was surprisingly relaxed, with Draco and Dudley doing most of the talking. Harry had been worried that Draco would act coldly towards Dudley after everything Harry told him, but either Draco was good at faking pleasantness (which, admittedly, was entirely possible) or he was genuinely enjoying Dudley's company.

"That is quite fascinating, Mr Dursley. So these Muggle transport devices—do you make them yourself?"

"Oh, no, course not! I just sell them, really. I make a decent buck out of the business, and it keeps the electricity bill paid."

"Elec—what, now?"

Dudley grinned, and with the air of having explained it many times before, said, "Electricity. You lot have charms and stick-waving and stuff, but we can't do that, so we make do with electricity. It's what keeps this room lit, for one." He pointed upwards, and they all looked at the light fixture hanging overhead.

"Oh my! That is quite intriguing; I must look into its mechanics one day."

Harry eyed Draco askance—they lived in a Muggle-style flat, so light bulbs were not a novel concept. He was probably pretending to be dense to get Dudley to keep talking. Harry pressed his leg against Draco's in silent thanks; he didn't know what he'd do if dinner was filled with serious, painful discussion of the past.

Draco turned to Dudley's wife, who was eating awkwardly and silently. "And how about you, Mrs Dursley? What do you do with your time?"

She blushed and glanced up at him. "Please, call me Vera. 'Mrs Dursley' makes me feel like my mother-in-law." This was said with a cringe, and Harry agreed wholeheartedly. "I'm an accountant. Nothing terribly exciting, I'm afraid."

Dudley snorted. "She's not just any accountant; she's an auditor! No financial baloney gets past her. If you're cutting corners, she'll sniff it out!"

She rolled her eyes at this depiction of her work, and Dudley wrapped his arm around her, pulling her towards him for an affectionate squish.

Harry smiled, feeling oddly happy to see his cousin in such a state. He had really seemed to mellow out over the years. "So…how did you and Vera meet?"

Dudley's smile faded a bit, to Harry's surprise. "Ah. It's…"

"I took care of him," she admitted. "Back when, you know, you were fighting a war."

"Yeah. Mum, Dad, and I were all in a safe house with her family, who were all of your sort."

"I'm the only one who can't do magic." A flicker of bitterness flashed across her features before she looked over at Dudley and smiled. "So there wasn't much for me to do in terms of defending the place, which is why I ended up playing cards with this tosspot over here."

"Yeah. She's really good. Beat me at almost every game."

"The tantrums he used to throw! 'How do you keep winning? You must be cheating! I'm telling Mummy!'"

"Oh, shut up. I never said the bit about Mummy."

She smirked and exchanged a glance with Draco, who flicked his eyes towards Harry and nodded sagely. Harry nudged him with his foot under the table, not liking whatever silent message Draco was sending her about Harry.

"Anyway," continued Dudley, "it was…a scary time. Her family tried their best to act like everything was fine, but it's hard when everyone's waving sticks around and fighting over the radio, and I just kept wondering if you were still alive."

Harry swallowed. He could not say the same thing the other way around; he had forgotten Dudley in the chaos of the Horcrux hunt, not to mention the final battle and then later on his burgeoning career as an Auror.

As if sensing his thoughts, Dudley thumped him gently on the shoulder. "Eh, it's not like I blamed you for not writing. From what her folks kept blathering on about, you were apparently someone important to them lot."

She shrugged. "I never saw what the big deal was, myself. From how he described you, you weren't much different from the next bloke."

"Believe me, I felt the same way, and I knew him in school," agreed Draco. Harry kicked him, but he smiled blithely as if Harry had done nothing of the sort.

"Ah, so you met in school?" Dudley looked between the two of them curiously, and Harry had to admit that he and Draco did make a peculiar couple.

"Mhm. Potter and I fell in hate at first sight, didn't we?"

Harry rolled his eyes. "He was a right prat. Insulted my best friend and everything."

"It is through no fault of mine that he is so hideous and easy to insult!"

Harry shoved playfully at his shoulder. "You see what I have to put up with?"

Dudley smiled wryly. "I can't imagine he was a bigger shite to you than I was, though."

And there it was, the thought they had been skirting around for the whole dinner.

Vera cleared her throat and mumbled something about clearing up the plates. Draco stood up and offered to help, and the two of them hastily left the room with as many plates as they could carry.

Harry looked into Dudley's pudgy face and saw two decades worth of regret in the lines around his mouth.

"Dudley—"

"Did you know, Harry, that no matter how far you travel, you just can't escape your regrets? I've been to places like Thailand, Australia, Belgium, the States, South Africa, and Chile—whatever Vera fancies, you know—and still, no matter who I look at, I see you. Maybe it's a scrawny kid in the streets or someone with messy black hair or even just anyone that sniffles the way you did—when I see one of them, all the memories rush back. No matter how nice I try to be to anyone new I meet, I just can't forget the way I treated you."

"Dudley, I'm—"

"I'm not a fool. I can see you're doing fine. You're much healthier than you were last time I saw you, and that blondie seems to do well by you. The fact you're here in the first place means you can't hate me too much. But that doesn't change the fact that I feel like a jerk. When I dated Vera, her family…they made me feel abnormal for the first time in my life. They could all do that magic stuff, and all I could do was watch and feel jealous. I thought back and realised you must have felt the same about us, except worse because at least her family didn't lock me away for being different."

Harry held up his hand and made an impatient noise, because otherwise Dudley would have gone on forever. "I get it. You're sorry for the past. You don't have to be. I've forgiven you since the last time I saw you."

"Even so, I don't feel I've apologised enough," said Dudley gruffly.

Harry stood up and gestured at the table. "This was a good apology, like you promised."

Dudley shook his head and stood up, too. "I promised a start."

Harry smiled. "Then we'll just have to see each other again, won't we? You know how to contact me now."

Dudley seemed to brighten up at that. "True."

"In fact, I'm inviting you and Vera for dinner next Friday."

The kitchen door burst open and Draco ran in, shaking his head indignantly. "The hell you are! We need to discuss this first! What if we have other engagements? Do you know how much planning a dinner takes, you uncultured swine?"

Harry groaned. "Were you eavesdropping?"

"No, but my stupidity alarms went off!"

Dudley guffawed, cutting them off. "You two are hilarious. Fine, send me a bloody bird when you've figured it out. We will be waiting."

When they reached the door, Dudley pulled Harry into another hug, and Harry stifled a groan.

He felt better when Dudley also pulled Draco in a hug, though. Draco's eyes widened and he mouthed, "Help me," but Harry stuck out his tongue at him. He deserved it.

"It was lovely to meet you two," said Vera.

"Thanks for dinner," Harry responded before he wrapped his arms around Draco and Disapparated.

When they were home, Draco immediately pressed his lips against Harry's, and they found comfort in the familiarity after having spent hours in unexplored terrain.

Draco pulled away first. "So?"

Harry shrugged. "He seems to seriously want to patch things. I think everything will be okay."

Draco pressed his nose against Harry's. "Good to hear. Now. Let us plan the next dinner. Now that I have discovered your relatives, I want to impress them."

Harry rolled his eyes. "We are not teenagers anymore. We don't need their blessing."

"I just want to show them how much better your life is now."

Harry grinned. He definitely had no regrets if he had Draco by his side.