Months passed.
The little flat stayed tidy for a while, then slowly got messy again, and then was cleaned up in a huge burst of energy to look as sparkling new as it had on the first day. As the weeks rolled by, as Cho started showing and cursing that she’d never learnt adjustment charms for her rapidly shrinking robes, the waxing and waning of clutter slowly settled into a routine.
Dudley bounced through several jobs: for a few weeks, he scrubbed floors in a supermarket. Off and on, he provided desk cover at a tiny solicitor’s office. After a single night shift at an all-hours café, when he came home exhausted, stinking of grease and having had barely ten minutes to interact with Cho in their whole day of opposite schedules, he decided it was maybe best to call that job a bust and keep looking.
Without ever quite saying anything about it, Dudley and Cho had comfortably settled into a life and a routine that was entirely different and decidedly less platonic than that first night’s agreement hashed out in a Wetherspoons. The spare bedroom had stayed empty and unused, while Dudley’s jeans and t-shirts intermingled in the wardrobe with heavy robes and Tutshill Tornados scarves. (As far as Dudley could tell, being a Tornados fan was roughly equivalent to supporting Arsenal right now: Cho, however, insisted that she’d stuck by them through the wilderness years and that she definitely wasn’t one of the glory hunters who’d come on board after their stunning set of victories in ’94.)
For Dudley, there was a lot of adjustment. He had to get used to helping Cho slice the desiccated frogs that came in the post so that she could simmer them down in an enormous pewter cauldron that sat on the stove – “maybe this will help the morning sickness,” she panted, grim faced and determined as she measured out moongrass while vanishing splashes of vomit from the kitchen tiles. He had to adjust to her vanishing with a whipcrack noise for work every morning, to newspapers filled with moving pictures of extremely old men in very tall hats, all of whom Cho seemed to have detailed opinions about, to occasional junk mail that screamed aloud about GIVE YOUR WAND A BOOST WITH ELRIC’S ALL-NATURAL ERUMPMENT HORN MALE ENHANCEMENT POTION. (“Nothing to do with you,” said Cho, giggling, as Dudley flushed crimson, “I’ve been getting spam like this since I moved in, that’s just what happens when you live in a wizarding flat.”) But he also had to adjust to other things: the exhausting daily rhythm of hauling himself around London to whichever temporary job he was working that week and collapsing back home, exhausted; he got used to living in London, riding endless trains and buses, having sold the now near-useless car to fund the growing nursery in the spare room; he became accustomed to quiet evenings sitting on the sofa with Cho, rubbing her swollen feet; to Cho’s hand soothing him as he woke from a nightmare of his dad shouting.
It was a Thursday. Dudley had missed his bus – he’d kill to be able to apparate – and was wearily traipsing back from the cleaning job he’d held for a near record three weeks. He stank of bleach, which had somehow managed to work its way into every tiny cut and crevice he hadn’t known he had on his hands, but there were, on balance, worse things to come home smelling of. He briefly toyed with splashing out on the monumental extravagance of a taxi: but there were worthier things to be spending money on, and besides, he barely had any cash on hand: they ended up converting most of their income into galleons anyway. (A few months ago, the enormous gold and silver coins had been stunning and mysterious to Dudley – now he was able to shrug and happily pay for a couple of butterbeers in the Leaky Cauldron without thinking twice about it.) Instead, he was reluctantly making the half hour walk back to the little flat that, without thinking about it, he’d been calling home for some time. It was Cho’s night to cook. Neither of them had any proficiency in the kitchen whatsoever, but just as she’d introduced him to moving photographs and packages of beetle carapaces delivered by owl, he’d introduced her to the wonderful world of microwave dinners, and they’d both been revelling in it. Sure enough, when he opened the door, he was greeted with the welcoming scent of Instant Chicken Korma – but also Cho, looking at him, concerned.
“Hey, is everything okay?” he asked: she was looking at him oddly, cautiously, and made him worried; worried enough for the tiredness to drain out of his bones. Was this it? Had she decided that enough was enough, that their kid would be better off with no father at all than some useless muggle who could barely even hold down a cleaning job? Should he start packing his things immediately? Should he-
She gave him a quick, distracted kiss on the cheek and the worst of his worries disappeared. “Yeah, I’m okay,” she said. “We just got a weird letter, that’s all – the owl just left.”
She nodded over to the coffee table, on which was sitting a somewhat battered looking letter. It took Dudley a moment to notice why it seemed to unusual to him: Cho had said that this letter had come by owl, but the envelope was a bright (if now a little grubby) white, far too bright for parchment: and on the front, a square blue stamp was fixed, the Queen entirely stationary. On the front, in neat, looping handwriting, was written:
Dudley Dursley
Wherever he is
A gnawing fear and confusion filled his stomach, and he flipped the envelope over and confirmed it. There, in the careful script of his mother, was written the return address: Number Four, Privet Drive, Little Whinging, Surrey CR3 1AD.
***
Dudley was staring at the envelope, frozen. Now? Here? Suddenly, the last months with Cho were all some kind of brilliant, terrifying dream, and he was waking up back at Privet Drive, back in a life he’d been surprisingly eager to leave.
“Are you going to open that?” Cho laid her hand on his arm gently, and he was brought spiralling back to reality.
“Yeah, I… how did this get here? You said an owl dropped it?”
Cho shrugged. “Yeah, I thought it was weird because it looks like a muggle letter. What’s wrong, Dudley?”
“It’s my mum,” he said flatly. Her writing to him was unlikely enough, but surely it couldn’t be Dad too? Mum writing to him was all wrong, but Dad writing to him was about as likely as the sky falling.
“Oh shit,” said Cho. What else was there to say, thought Dudley. He made a vain attempt to open the letter, but it had been taped shut so thoroughly that he wasn’t getting anywhere. “Here, let me – diffindo” said Cho, and the envelope sprang apart easily.
A folded sheet of notepaper fell out– Dudley could place the notepad exactly next to the phone in the hallway at Privet Drive. His hands shaking only a little, he unfolded it and read, in a hand a little shakier than usual:
Dudley,
I’m sorry about how everything has turned out. I am. I wish you hadn’t had to leave. Maybe we could see each other? I’ll be in town on the twenty first. Perhaps we could have tea somewhere? I’m sure you have a lot to tell me.
I wish things hadn’t turned out this way.
Lots of love,
Mum
PS – when you write back, it’s best if you don’t write straight to the house. Write to Mrs. Figg – did you know she was one of your lot them? She’s at 2 Wisteria Walk if you’ve forgotten.
“Hadn’t had to leave?” As Cho’s pregnancy had started showing, she’d been glowing recently. But right now, rather than impending motherhood, she was glowing with righteous fury. “She says that like them throwing you out was some kind of unfortunate accident.”
“Yeah, it’s…” Dudley shrugged, and let the letter drop to the floor. “It’s not great.”
“Nothing from your Dad, then?” asked Cho. Dudley had tried not to go into too many details about the day they’d cut him off, or about his parents at all if he could help it. But Cho could read into what he wasn't saying well enough to know that when he woke up from a nightmare, it was his dad’s voice that had shouted him awake.
“Yeah, I don’t think she wants him to know she’s writing. She’s asked me to write to the neighbour, see-“
“Wait,” said Cho, “is that Arabella Figg?”
“I don’t remember her name,” said Dudley. “She’s just an old lady who lives around the corner from Mum and Dad. I didn’t know she was a witch, but she must have lent Mum the owl, I suppose…” the idea of Mum going to a witch for help, asking someone to use magic, was so strange that he started feeling floaty and unreal again. He gripped Cho’s arm for support.
“She’s a war hero.”
“Oh?” said Dudley, distantly. In the wizarding world, just about everyone seemed to be a war hero. He had a vague memory of Harry dragging him to see Mrs. Figg back when they were fifteen, when those terrible things – Dementors? – had descended and completely crushed him. Had he known that she was a witch then? Maybe. He’d been much too distracted to really think about it.
“Yeah, she was a squib spy for the Order of –“ Cho paused and looked at Dudley. “Hey, Dudley, are you okay?”
Dudley shook his head. Of course he wasn’t, and they both knew that. He let out one long, long breath. “I…” he found himself unable to meet Cho’s eyes. Not just that, but he wasn’t able to hold his focus on anything at all: his eyes were unfocused, looking straight through everything without taking much in. It was as though his brain had decided that it had quite enough going on inside of it that he shouldn’t try to take in any more external stimulation. Even Cho’s voice was coming to him fuzzy and distant now.
“Do you need to sit down?”
Did he? He really didn’t know. “I, um..” he said. He needed to not have got this letter. He needed to have his mum and dad never talk to him again. (His dad was probably still going to be keeping his end of the bargain there.) He needed peace, quiet, a moment to think, to not think at all. He needed…
Suddenly, the thoughts racing around his mind and chasing their own tails cleared, giving him a moment of calm. He opened eyes he hadn’t realised were closed, and saw Cho pointing a wand at him.
“It’s okay, it’s okay!” She said, seeing him instinctively flinch back – some old habits still died hard. “I just cast a calming charm on you. It looked like you needed it.”
“Thanks,” Dudley managed. Whatever the spell was, it hadn’t actually solved any of his problems – just skipped him forward a good half hour through the panic to a point where he could take a fairer look at them. He felt exhausted, like he’d just spent three hours in the gym – but without any of the endorphins. “I needed that.”
Cho wrapped her arms around him. “Do you want to talk about it?”
He shrugged. “I… I want a pen and paper. And to borrow the owl.”
***
The café was small, cluttered, and not one hundred percent clean: not the kind of place, Dudley thought, where Mum would normally be caught dead. The door gave a little tinkle as Dudley opened, and he thought, looking around, that she probably chose it for exactly that reason. There was no chance anyone she knew would bump into her here, her or her disgraced son.
He was exactly on time: it was four on the dot, despite the plethora of things that had gone wrong with him making this appointment. He’d had to miss a shift at his latest cleaning job: he wasn’t sure if they’d call him in again now. All said, he’d rather have been scrubbing toilets right now: at least you knew where you stood with that. When he set out that afternoon and found the first train he’d meant to catch was cancelled, he’d nearly turned around and gone straight back home. Cho would understand, and Mum would… well, him skipping out on their little meeting was about what she deserved.
But somehow, he’d found himself jogging for the replacement bus, making the change back onto the tube, and picking his way around barely familiar streets to find the little café she’d suggested in her second letter. And now here he was, slipping through the door just as his watch hit four, scanning through the few customers and seeing his mother.
She was sitting with a cup of tea in front of her that she seemed determined not to touch, and was clutching her handbag close to her as if she didn’t trust anyone in the building, beady eyes darting around – within a second of him seeing her, their eyes met, and he knew that she’d spotted him too. No backing out now, thought Dudley – he gave her a weak wave and headed over to her.
“Hello darling,” she said, giving him a pinched smile that didn’t convey any joy at all. He pulled an uncomfortable plastic chair out from under the table and sat down.
“Hi, Mum.”
After this gargantuan effort, they lapsed into an uneasy silence, neither of them able to meet the other’s eyes. Dudley studiously examined the menu above the counter, and his mum gazed into the tea cooling in front of her. After what felt to Dudley like about an hour, but had probably been about thirty seconds, she looked up and said, “it’s so nice to see you, Dudders.”
“Thanks for, um, asking me here, Mum.” Said Dudley, and he felt the void of everything they were trying not to say yawning in front of him again. No point showing up if you’re not going to talk to each other at all, he thought, and decided to press on. “How are you and…” he said, the word “Dad” catching in his throat. “Everything?” He finished lamely, avoiding eye contact.
“Everything’s… fine. We miss you, Dudley.” It took a lot not to scoff as he watched his mother swill the weak tea around the cup, never actually picking it up to drink any. “How have you been, darling? Have you found somewhere to stay?”
When Dudley had written back to her, he’d decided not to give her Cho’s address. Well, not Cho’s address, really: the last few months he’d really started to think of it as their flat. He was glad Mum was writing to him, sort of. He was glad he was here, sort of. But he didn’t know if he wanted her to know exactly where he was living. Poor Mrs. Figg, ferrying their messages back and forth: he made a mental note to suggest they send her a bottle of firewhiskey with the next owl. (Was that an appropriate gift for some sort of war hero?)
“I’m… staying with Cho,” said Dudley, after just a moment’s pause. “Not too far from here. We’re…” he tried to think of how best to put exactly what they had between them into words, not a task that they’d ever really bothered with after that aborted attempt in the pub. He settled on “happy.”
His mother gave him a weak smile. “That’s good!” she said, with what could, in the right light, pass for enthusiasm. “And the baby…?”
“Due in March,” said Dudley, trying to work out how much he wanted to say. “We’re not going to find out if it’s a boy or a girl until it, um, happens – we like surprises.” Good thing, too, he thought, because this baby has been one surprise after another.
“D’you want anything?” Their conversation, such as it was, was interrupted by a glare directed at Dudley by a particularly surly looking teenager in a violently yellow apron who, Dudley realised, was probably a waiter.
“Oh, um,” he said, reading back through the menu in a hurry, “Just a black coffee, please.”
The waiter shuffled off with a curt nod, leaving the two of them to sit in a new period of awkward silence. Dudley took a moment’s pause and tried hard not to get lost in just how weird this whole situation was. He was used to his mother collecting information to share – he was used to having his achievements bragged about, or hearing other people’s scandals laid out in exhaustive detail over breakfast. But here, Mum seemed to be collecting information carefully, only to put it away and never speak of it again. It was almost like how his Mum – how they all, really – had treated Harry for years, he thought, with the hot flush of shame that usually accompanied this particular line of reminiscence. But it wasn’t quite the same: with Harry, there hadn’t been any interest. Mum had heard about Harry’s day, or learnt what he was doing, or thought about him at all, only as a last resort when no alternatives presented themselves. Here, she was clearly trying to learn. He did his best to snap out of his head, wishing he had Cho here with a calming charm, and added ‘call Harry’ to his to-do list. He could probably put up with a few minutes of listening to Harry talk about his perfect life – with everything over the years, it felt like the least he could do.
“Well I’m proud of you,” Mum said, with that same glassy smile again. “For.. doing the right thing. I know it can’t have been easy, with… everything.”
That’s probably the closest I’m getting to an apology, Dudley thought, choosing to focus on that and not the implication that he was only with Cho because it was the ‘right thing’. He didn’t know what was sadder – that this was the only apology he was going to get, or that it was more than he’d expected.
The waiter shuffled into view, bringing Dudley’s cup of coffee, which looked like tar and smelled about as appetising, and set it in front of him. Dudley decided not to make the fatal mistake of drinking any of it. “Are you going to pay separately, or together?“
There was a moment’s panicked silence, and Dudley replied “separately” at exactly the same time his mother replied “together.” They shared an uneasy glance while the waiter looked at them dispassionately.
“I need to know for the till,” he said, kicking his heel.
“I’ll get it, Diddykins,” said Mum. “With a baby on the way, you’ll need to…” she trailed off as the waiter stomped away. “Are you going to be okay? I mean, with the baby, do you… I can send money if you need it, your father-“ Dudley winced, “doesn’t have to know-“
“We’re… we’re fine, Mum,” said Dudley – and they were. The best way to describe Dudley’s earnings were ‘inconsistent’, but although he wasn’t great at running the numbers on the conversion rate, Cho’s salary in galleons was more than enough for the two of them. Even the three of them. Cho had gingerly suggested, a few nights ago, that if Dudley couldn’t find any steady work, he could always stay at home with the baby. A few months ago, working for a living would have been a totally alien prospect to him – but by now, it was a far less daunting prospect than taking care of a real life baby. They’d agreed to talk about it later.
“Honestly, we’re okay. Thanks, though.” He sighed, and tried to find another few words to force out of the conversation. “Are you…” he fully intended to finish the sentence with ‘doing anything else in London?’ but found himself instead asking ‘looking forward to being a grandmother?” Where the fuck had that come from? He thought.
The grandmother-to-be looked at Dudley, just as stunned at the question as he was. “I, um…” she did her best to avoid his eye, and actually went so far as to pick up her tea and take a sip of it. From her expression as she swallowed, she seemed to immediately recognise that this was a mistake. “Yes, Dudley, of course.” She gave him a pained smile and set the tea down. “I mean, I don’t know how often I’ll get to see you and... and…”
“Cho,” supplied Dudley, helpfully – how hard could it be to say a name, really, he asked himself.
“-and the baby,” she continued, unabashed, “because… well, you know-“
Dudley didn’t complete that sentence for her, and was suddenly reminded of how hard it could be to say a name.
“But it’s very exciting,” she said, fixing him with a smile that was more terrified than anything else.
Dudley sighed. He really didn’t know what he’d expected. If anything, this was going at about the best case scenario. He should leave, he should never have come at all, he should… But once again, the words coming out of his mouth managed to slip past his guard and catch him by surprise. “Mum, listen, I know it’s hard, with…” he let Dad’s name go unspoken again, “but in April after the baby’s born, we’re going to have a, um, naming ceremony.” Where was this coming from? He thought. “It’s some kind of wizard thing, I don’t know if you went to the one for Harry?” Even after all these years, his cousin’s name could still make Mum flinch. “and, listen, I know it’s hard with…” he gritted his teeth, “with Dad, and I certainly don’t expect him to come, but maybe… if you want to get to know the kid, maybe you could-“ The breath ran out of him, and he left the possibility dangling in the air between them.
“Oh Dudley…” he was surprised to see tears gathering in his mother’s eyes. “That would… I mean, that is to say… I can’t.” Dudley nodded. Of course. “I mean, your father would-“
“He wouldn’t have to know, Mum. You could just go out for the day, you don’t have to-“
“No, love, I don’t think I can.” She blinked, hard, and Dudley realised that it wasn’t just her that was crying. “I’m… I’m sure it will be lovely.”
“Mum, please.” She didn’t say anything. “It’ll be your grandchild. Don’t you want to-“
His mother cut him off, starting to stand up. “Well, darling, it’s been lovely to see you, but I’ve really got to be going.”
“Mum, no. Listen, can’t you just-“
She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, put down some cash on the table, and gave him a hurried kiss on the cheek. Her lips felt cold. “It’s been really lovely seeing you, Dudders,” she said, completely ignoring him. “Make sure you write to Mrs. Figg.”
“Mum-“ he said – but it was no use. She picked her way through the crowd, and Dudley sat for a moment, perfectly still, as she left the café. Then, his mother gone, he went home to be with his family.