CHAPTER ONE
DUDLEY GOES DUMB
After saying goodbye to Hermione and Ron, Harry began thinking about the last words he had said to them. Would he dare using magic during his summer holiday while staying with the Dursleys? He was asking himself this question when he was in the living room at 4 Privet Drive. How would Dudley and his parents react if he found out? But why not? He was wondering about this when Uncle Vernon interrupted his thoughts.
“Can I ask why on earth you have brought that dreadful owl into our house?”
Vernon had managed to sound irritated and bored at the same time.
Harry could not answer because Aunt Petunia immediately snapped:
“He just wants to make us feel ashamed of him.”
This type of conversation felt all too familiar.
Meanwhile, Dudley was sitting on his chair totally silent, with a peculiar look in his eyes. Harry was not sure if Dudley simply feared him, or whether he had not expected Harry ever to come back from Hogwarts. Either way, Harry decided there and then that he was not going to miss the opportunity to try a few tricks on his unpleasant cousin.
The following morning was a Saturday. It was a sunny and warm day, perfect for the start of summer, thought Harry. Something felt different, though. The Dursleys had not put Harry up in the old cupboard under the stairs. Instead, they had arranged things so that he could stay in Dudley’s second room. Harry was quite pleased. He would not miss sleeping in the cupboard.
Dudley looked particularly bitter that morning.
“I couldn’t sleep the whole night, the owl was making noises all the time”, Dudley mumbled to his mother.
“Keep your voice down,” Petunia whispered back. “He could have heard you. Do you want problems with your cousin?”
But Harry had heard them.
Later, when he went upstairs he discovered that something strange about the cage that Hedwig was kept in. He could not see his owl in it and upon closer inspection, he found the bird lying flat on the bottom of the cage. There were strange pellets around him and sure enough, these turned out to be rat poison. That’s it, I have had enough! thought Harry, I’m going to give Dudley a little taste of his own medicine.
Harry waited until night-time, put his invisibility cloak on, and went to his cousin’s room. Dudley was snoring, sounding like a real pig. Harry started making little noises until his cousin eventually woke up. Dudley immediately turned the bedside lamp on, but Harry would turn it off right away, whispering a bit of simple magic. Dudley panicked and moved around frantically. He tried to scream, but Harry had already whispered a silence spell and found that Dudley couldn’t. Gasping for air, Dudley tried to open the window, but Harry, standing aside, kept it pressed so that it would not open even after Dudley had slid the bolts open. Harry gave Dudley this type of treatment throughout the night.
Harry left Dudley’s room. Dudley felt really unwell all night.
Harry emerged late the following morning. When he came downstairs for breakfast, his aunt was very nice to him.
“Would you like eggs and bacon, or would you prefer something else?”, said Petunia.
“Let the boy make his own breakfast”, interrupted Uncle Vernon, “he is not a baby.”
All this was very strange, but Harry was not scared. They had something up their sleeve, but he did not know what it was. He was sizing up his aunt and uncle and he could tell they were sizing him up too. But he might as well enjoy it while it lasted.
“Where is my cousin?” Harry asked.
They looked at him, surprised. They were uneasy in Harry’s presence and they knew very well that the two boys were not friends.
“He is at his friend’s house today,” answered Petunia.
“All right,” said Harry. He was happy. No Dudley today.
He spent the rest of the day thinking what else he could do to make his cousin’s life a bit more miserable, and finally he thought of it. It promised to be real fun.
Harry spent the following days being very nice to Dudley. Dudley’s parents did not know that it was Harry who had been responsible for the other night’s events. Dudley had been so scared that he had not dared to tell anyone about it, not even his parents. Dudley had a horrible feeling he was going mad.
Then one morning, Harry decided to go a step further.
“Dudley why don’t we go to the school to play a bit of football?” he asked Dudley.
Of course, Dudley did not want to play football with Harry. Dudley was fat and slow – he had always been fat and slow – but he thought that he could ask some of his friends to come. Together, they could try and make Harry suffer a bit like in the good old days.
“Sure, I will go,” said Dudley. “Let me just call a couple of friends and then we can all meet by the football pitch.”
“That is perfect,” said Harry.
Dudley was putting his little plan together and Harry was doing the same. He went up to his room and found his best magic book. It was the one that Hermione had lent him about enchantments and other tricks, by professor Rodolfus Misticus. He didn’t have to read it for long before he found what he was looking for. A few minutes later he was on his way to the football pitch.
Harry hid himself behind some trees, so he could cast his spell on Dudley. After he had done so, he continued walking towards the others. It quickly became clear that something was wrong with Dudley. Every time that he tried to talk he sounded so loud that the others looked at him with very surprised faces. Dudley felt very uncomfortable. It did not matter how quietly he tried to speak, his voice came out too loud. It was so loud, that people in the street would stop to look at him.
In the end, Dudley gave up on trying to speak. He could not explain to his fellow gang members what the plan to get Harry was. The other boys got scared and at Dudley’s weird behaviour and it took some time for them to gather themselves.
“You are a freak!” one of them sniped.
“Do not call me again! I had other plans for today but now it’s too late for me to join my real friends,” said another one, trying to hide his fear.
When Harry and Dudley came back to the Dursleys’ house a couple of hours later, Harry was quite relaxed. Dudley, on the other hand, had a look on his face that really worried his parents. They tried to comfort him with cake but even that didn’t really work.
The next morning Vernon looked like he had an idea. You could always tell he had an idea by the way his nose twitched. After breakfast, he pulled Dudley aside and said:
“Look, I realize Harry has been getting up your nose and he has been getting up our noses too. So, here’s what we are going to do. Just ignore him. Pretend he’s not there. Like he’s invisible and you can’t hear him. Petunia has agreed to do the same thing. If you join in and give him the silent treatment too, he’ll soon learn. He’ll learn his lesson. Let’s put him back in his place.”
Dudley did not say anything.
“Now that’s the idea,” said Vernon.
Dudley was silent for several days.
CHAPTER TWO
THE COLD SHOULDER
Having suffered at the hand of a whole series of weird, seemingly random events, Dudley started to get the idea that maybe it wasn’t quite as random as he first thought. These…things, that had happened to him must be of a magical nature. Come to think of it, it was obvious! How could he not have understood it from the beginning? What he at first thought were horrible nightmares, he now realized were quite real and there was only one person in this house who could use magic.
“It’s that damned cousin of mine. How could he do this to me?” he muttered to himself. “How could he treat me like this when he knows that those magic people of his will cast him out for doing using magic on normal people …”
Dudley spent most of his time on this particular day in silence, thinking and delving deeper into his dark thoughts while Harry, quite pleased with himself, was simply relaxing in his newly found fortress of solitude, which was Dudley’s second room. Who would have known that having your own room would improve life so much? This really was what life was all about. The Dursleys seemed to have realized how poorly they had been treating him before his first year at Hogwarts. Now, things were going to be different. Harry smiled and felt safe in the knowledge that Dudley’s suffering from ‘unfortunate’ events weren’t going to be traced back to him.
While considering his next move, however, Harry felt a chill move down his spine and he could almost hear Hermione berating him for being so unbelievably petty. Thinking about it just made it worse. He realized that his newfound friends at Hogwarts would frown upon such behaviour and that he really was just as unlikeable as Draco Malfoy if he felt he could go around inflicting suffering on those close to him. Harry spent the rest of the day in silence, growing more irritated with himself and more regretful too. Maybe it hadn’t been a good idea to goad Dudley into these horrible situations after all.
Meanwhile, the spell had worn off and Dudley discovered he had regained his normal voice. Dudley crept downstairs to his parents and spent most of the day telling them about the things that had happened to him and how it could be nothing other than Harry’s magic. At first, his mother had been terrified to hear about the suffering of her precious boy, while his father muttered that it can’t be Harry and his magic. Vernon didn’t say much except that Dudley should just leave it alone.
After many hours discussing it, it dawned on Dudley’s parents that it can’t simply be nothing if Dudley was this adamant. They ordered Dudley to simply keep on ignoring “the bastard” if he’s causing the family this much trouble. The parents were tired and slightly off-balance. They had also experienced some small but weird things like bumping into furniture of late, feeling like everything had moved for unknown reasons. Dudley didn’t want to keep on ignoring Harry, but his parents demanded it of him. It was best just to leave the little pest alone, he had caused enough trouble as it was. Harry should have been grateful for the situation he was in now, having been given Dudley’s second room to live in out of pure charity.
The next day, Harry came down but no-one said anything to him. This unsettled him more than usual because he had started to regret using his magic. The cold-shouldering seemed worse than ever. Dudley, Vernon and Petunia didn’t even make eye contact. Dudley’s focus was solely on shovelling down his food and there was no acknowledgement of Harry’s presence whatsoever. Harry could feel the chill again. All this was clearly a result of his own actions. What he had done to Dudley had been found out. He would suffer the consequences for a long time, maybe forever. He grabbed a piece of bread and ran out of the house into the garden to be alone.
What was he going to do now? Harry realized he couldn’t live for another two months with no one talking to him. His thoughts flowed back to Hermione and Ron. What would they think if he came back as a nervous wreck at the end of summer? What would Dumbledore think of Harry if he knew what he had done? Harry had a rock- hard, sinking feeling in his gut.
Meanwhile, Dudley was looking out of the living room window to see Harry sitting at the edge of their garden, deep in his thoughts. He scrutinized the boy, to see if anything magic would sprout from his hands. Who knew how he was doing it? Did he just wave his hands and think of a spell and things started to happen? Could Dudley do the same if he were to… An idea popped up inside Dudley’s head and he got up, waddled down the corridor and up the stairs towards Harry’s new room. He tried the door handle and found that it was unlocked, sneaked inside and found one of Harry’s books on his bed.
Opening it up he looked around to see if he could find anything he could understand but it was all mostly gibberish to him. There were pictures, arcane formulas and plants he’d never seen before. He couldn’t figure out anything by looking through the first ten pages, so he gave up and closed the book. There must be something in here to use against his cousin, Dudley thought. He heard a peep from behind him and froze. Turning around slowly, he saw Harry’s white owl sitting perfectly still. It blinked. Harry had brought the owl back to life! Dudley sat on the bed in sheer panic.
Dudley flinched as Harry casually walked in the room.
“Dudley?” said Harry cautiously. “You look upset.”
Dudley didn’t move.
“My magic book.” said Harry. “Do you want me to show you?”
Harry opened the book as if he were reading to a child.
“Now look, this one is the one that brought the owl back to life.”
He showed Dudley a line that read: “Resuscitare Ibis Subitum.”
Harry said to Dudley: “Shall we have some fun, just you and me?”
Dudley was still looking away but nodded.
Harry threw the book in his backpack.
“Come on, let’s go.”
They wondered down to the woods and spent hours messing around with magic by the pond. The best bit was when they found a cat playing with its prey, a few young chicks. Harry managed to pull off transfiguration and turned the nasty cat into a toad.
The boys came home exhausted all the excitement, but Dudley could not sleep. He felt he had gone against his parents. Tossing and turning, his thoughts turned against Harry, who had seduced him with his magic tricks.
CHAPTER THREE
THE PADLOCKS IN THE SHED
Dudley woke up thinking Harry had ruined his whole life. Dudley was an intruder who wanted to take everything that was rightfully his. In the past, Dudley had hurt Harry as much as possible while his parents looked the other way. But it had always bothered Dudley that Vernon had not simply thrown Harry out. It must be those wizards and witches at Harry’s school. They must have a hold on Vernon.
Dudley had been spared Harry throughout the whole of spring but now that disgusting, ugly kid was here trying to seduce him with his magic show. Dudley thought that Harry needed to learn his place again, an orphan who the Dursleys had taken in. Dudley was starting to feel really helpless. He started fantasizing about killing that unbearable wizard. How do you kill a wizard – can they even die, he wondered? Can they be killed with magic or through physical violence?
Dudley went to the library to find a book on how to kill a wizard. Searching for hours, Dudley could not find any single easy solutions. There are dangers to killing a wizard, he learned. They can put an enchantment on you before they die. The books also warn that wizards can come back as ghosts and haunt you for the rest of your life. “I have to kill Harry without him even knowing it!” he thought. He needed a rifle with a sight, so he could do fire from far away in the distance.
Dudley thought about how he could get a weapon. It’s not easy getting your hands on a hunting rifle. There had been shootings in the news and the rules had been tightened. You need a license, you need to be over 18 and you need to belong to a club, he learned.
Dudley realized he did not know any criminals who he could buy weapons off, so Vernon would have to get him the rifle he wanted. Dudley moaned and moaned and eventually Vernon went down to the police station and applied for a certificate.
“All these bloody forms,” Vernon said repeatedly but the certificate arrived soon enough.
Dudley was driven quite mad waiting for the rifle to arrive. He spent hours in the shed playing with a set off padlocks. He joined the padlocks together, making long strings while muttering mad things about Harry to himself. Every time he thought of Harry he flinched and felt his temper rise.
Dudley was turning into a very strange little boy. One day he decided to tell his parents that Harry had used magic with him just for fun.
“Harry did magic. We went to the woods. He showed me some really crazy stuff. He’s using magic even if he promised he wouldn’t. He’s not allowed to.”
“Is this true? He gave us his word he wouldn’t”, said Vernon angrily.
“But wait a minute,” said Petunia with a stern face. “I thought we had told you to ignore Harry and yet you followed him to the woods!”
Dudley became very quiet after that. Later, in his room, he felt he really was going crazy. He hated Harry so much but loved the feeling of being with him when he showed him magic. But his parents simply wanted to freeze him out. Dudley decided to make a plan. Telling his parents about Harry using magic had been a mistake. It would take something bigger to make them listen.
CHAPTER FOUR
DUDLEY’S DAY
The house, 4 Privet Drive, was quite an ordinary affair, if you can call having the Dursleys and Harry Potter living under the same roof ordinary. Their home was situated in the middle of a section of long rows of terraced houses. That morning, a Monday, was back-to-school day and there was a slightly higher level of activity than normal in the neighbourhood. The sun was making an appearance and was gradually pushing out the cold still hanging around in the shaded parts around the house. The shade was slowly retreating from Vernon Dursley’s car as it stood parked facing 4 Privet Drive.
If you had looked inside, you would have seen boys and girls getting into their new, or old, school uniforms with cheery excitement or dread in some cases. Some were going to take the bus, some would go by bike, those who had decided to walk had already left. One of the boys getting ready to be driven to Dartwell School was Dudley Dursley, who had been reduced to a nervous, jumpy wreck of a boy. His cousin, Harry, was not getting ready for school at all. He was snoozing away, safe in the knowledge that his term at Hogwarts would not start for another week.
Suddenly Aunt Petunia stormed into Harry’s room. Looking demonstratively the other way, she placed a piece of paper on the edge of Harry’s bed and left the room without saying anything. It was a to-do list.
Harry stopped himself from groaning at the thought of a whole series of tedious tasks. He grabbed his dressing gown and followed Petunia down the stairs. Petunia walked straight out of the front door without so much as a look back at Harry.
Harry moved to the window. He saw a sweating, febrile Dudley in his Dartwell School uniform. Vernon was already sitting behind the wheel, tapping the steering wheel impatiently. Petunia got in the backseat. Dudley, as always, had parked himself in the front. Then Harry noticed that Dudley had taken his backpack rather than his regular schoolbag. Harry wondered what possible reason Dudley would have to bring his massive, top of the range backpack to school. For one thing, Dudley looked very silly with his gigantic pack in his lap in the front of the car. It was nearly as big as Dudley himself. Harry shrugged and wandered off to the kitchen to read the to-do list over breakfast.
The first thing on the list was to clean Dudley’s room. Harry felt a groan move up through the bottom of his stomach and out of his throat. Dudley’s room was disgusting. But Harry knew a trick. He would fetch the jerrycans filled with vinegar that Vernon kept in the garden shed. The floor, desk and chair in Dudley’s room could be doused in vinegar and then be left to fester. The dirt came off more easily this way and Harry did not have to scrub.
Harry got dressed and wandered down to the shed. Opening up the flimsy door, he immediately saw that someone had rearranged all of Vernon’s old junk. He looked in the box where Dudley had kept his padlocks. All gone. That’s odd, thought Harry. Why would Dudley have removed his padlocks? Harry noticed one more thing. The door of the strongbox in which Vernon’s hunting rifle was kept was slightly ajar.
Harry did not do much thinking after that. Something was badly wrong. He half-ran to the house and then sped up the stairs. And there it was. Dudley had left a letter in his typically scribbled writing.
Hello all you basterds,
Today is my day. I will show you all I am not a useless fat little boy. You are all basterds. Harry I hate you. You use magic even though you are not allowed to. You basterd you. If I had magic, I would be more responsable and use it to help other people. Instead all you do is pick on me and use your bloody magic to hurt me and mum and dad. We took care of you since you were a baby did you ever think of that? You are my cousin. But today I will show you my magic! MY Magic! Yes, some magic of my own. I am gonna take the whole school down. You will see. You will be sorry!!
Mum and dad thanks for everything. But you should not have told me what to do. I did not want your stupid game of not talking to Harry, you basterds. What was the point of that. Now I will show you what happens if you take the mick out of me. So, it’s your fault too.
To the police, if you find this note:
You are too late you basterds. But I am nice and I’ll make it easy on you. What happened today is the fault of: Harry Potter, Vernon Dursley and Petunia Dursley. Go and arrest them because it is all their fault.
Bye bye you complete and utter basterds.
Dudley
Harry rushed into his room and got his broom. He flew out of the window and straight upwards, high into the sky so that he could fly to Dartwell School without being noticed by any peeping Muggles. Harry landed behind some bushes near the school and hid his broom.
The Dartwell School buildings were a drab affair. The buildings were an unfortunate mix of different architectural styles. There was a medium-sized tower-block and one of the buildings looked like an old chapel. Harry could see what must be the main building, with an entrance and some high windows. This cluster of buildings was surrounded by an uneven, concrete surface.
“Right,” thought Harry. “Now what am I doing?” He walked slowly around the school trying to peep through the windows as best as he could, but they were very high up. It was deadly quiet all around. Where was everybody? He kept moving around the buildings and suddenly he thought he heard something. A faint, panicked sort of whimpering. And there it was again. Harry moved towards the faint noise which became more pronounced as he moved towards the back of the main building.
Harry stood in front of the wall at the back of the main building and gathered his thoughts. There was a was a large window at the top of the wall and beside it was a door. Judging by the sounds, he knew there was probably another wall in the way of Dudley and his schoolmates. Harry could just about remember a simple bit of magic from “The Standard Book of Spells (Grade 1)” by Miranda Goshawk. It was about opening doors. What was it again? Harry had crammed these things for his exams at Hogwarts. Having pushed his brain painfully hard, he seemed to remember something.
“Accio Potentia Overtis Fenestris,” Harry pronounced.
Harry waited for a few moments, but the door did not move. Had he got the spell wrong? He racked his brain and realized he simply could not remember. Then he heard a creaking sound to his left. The high window was opening slowly. His spell had opened the window instead of the door.
Harry took a run-up, pressed his foot against the wall and could just about reach the window with his hands and crawled inside. As he fell into the corridor, he could hear manic laughter. A hollow, manic laughter. Dudley, thought Harry, unmistakably Dudley.
Harry was now in the corridor next to the assembly hall. The only way in was through another window.
“Accio Potentia Overtis Fenestris,” Harry pronounced. As the next window slowly opened, Harry could hear the noise of children whimpering and scurrying around. Every so often, Dudley’s manic laughter would echo in the assembly hall.
“Run, run you bastards,” exclaimed Dudley. “Who’s scared now, eh?”
As Harry crawled up and gazed through the window, he immediately made out a terrible scene. Dudley was rushing around the assembly hall, chasing terrified school-children with Uncle Vernon’s hunting rifle. As Dudley charged towards the other children, they would spread out in all directions, as though he was herding cats. Some children were clinging to the walls in the corners, scared stiff.
“Bang! Bang! Bang!”
The rifle echoed through the hall and the school-children shrieked in unison. Then it was quiet for a while.
“Ha! Ha! Ha! You’re all scared now you bastards,” said Dudley. “Come and check out my new best friend, my little rifle!”
Harry realized with immense relief that Dudley had fired at the roof.
Dudley laughed manically again. Hanging along the wall on the outside, Harry looked around and saw that Dudley had put padlocks on the doors of all the exits of the assembly hall. What to do? Harry realized that he could not use magic in front of hundreds of Muggles. Besides, if he got the spell wrong, the outcome could be disastrous. And what’s more, Dudley may never get back to normal if Harry saved him and the children using magic. Harry’s use of magic was what drove Dudley mad in the first place.
Harry quickly but quietly lowered himself into the assembly hall. Dudley was in the middle of the hall and facing the other way.
“Dudley! It’s me. Put down the rifle and let’s talk.”
“What! Harry! Here, do you want some of this too?!”
Dudley had swept around and pointed the hunting rifle at Harry. Harry instinctively put his hands up.
“Dudley … come on. If you hurt any of these kids, you will be in trouble for the rest of your life.”
“I don’t care, you bastard. Do you hear me? I don’t care! My life is just a load of bloody trouble anyway.”
“Whatever this is about, we’ll make it better. Things will get better, do you see? Vernon and Petunia …”
“… Vernon and Petunia, Vernon and Petunia! Stupid bastards. They got me to, they made me …”
Dudley was still aiming the rifle at Harry.
“I’ll talk to them,” said Harry. “We’ll straighten this out.”
“Why would they listen to you? They’re not going to listen to you! They ignore you, they pretend you’re not there! And they make me do the bloody same!”
“Alright, but if you talk to them, they’ll listen. If you want, I can help you figure out what to say.”
Suddenly, Dudley put his arms along his body. He folded out his hands, holding the rifle in his right hand, and started waddling around like an overgrown, rotund penguin.
“Ooh, I’m Harr-y Pott-er! I know mag-ic! Lalala, I’m so great. Look at me. Abracadabra. I’m Harr-y Pott-er! I can make a cupboard move, oh, I’m so great.”
Harry saw clearly that Dudley had gone quite mad. He was sweating and physically as well as mentally drained. Harry knew that this was his moment to make a move.
“Dudley, do you remember that time I showed you a magic spell in the woods? How we turned that nasty cat into a toad? How we laughed? Dudley, we can do that again! Dudley, come on.”
Harry moved slowly towards Dudley who was circling about like a demented penguin.
“Ooh, look at me! I’m Harr-y Pott-er! I know mag-ic! I am a great wizard! My mum’s a witch, that’s right! Ooh, come on boys and girls, gather round. The show’s about to start. I’m HARRY POOOOTTER! I am just so great. Look at me…”
Harry could not be sure, but he thought he could see a tear rolling down Dudley’s chubby, glowing red cheek. Harry kept talking in a soothing tone as he slowly approached Dudley. For a very brief moment, he realized that all the other school-children were frozen like statues and were simply staring at Harry and Dudley. Then Harry gathered himself and leapt on Dudley in a sort of rugby tackle and forced his plump body to the ground. Their faces were squeezed tight against each other and Harry could see into Dudley’s bloodshot eyes.
“Why can’t I have magic? Why can’t I have magic? …”
Dudley fainted. What seemed to Harry like an eternity passed. Then, out of nowhere, the Dartwell School head teacher approached the boys and crouched over them.
“Hello, I am Chris Bluebank, I am the headmaster of this school,” he said in a wooden and slightly forced voice. He was clearly trying to compose himself. Harry wanted to ask him where he had been hiding all this time but decided against it.
“Hello Mr. Bluebank,” he said and it all felt very weird. “I am Harry Potter.”
“Harry Potter? So you are … you know the magic ..”
“Oh, no, no. You know, that stuff. No, poor Dudley, well he’s been given the wrong medication. He’s totally deluded.”
“Right, deluded. Very much so. Well, we had better call the police and all that. Does anyone know what to do about these padlocks?”
After that, things happened very quickly. The police came, and it took a while for them to reach the conclusion that the best way forward was to put a ladder on each side of the window to help the children out of the assembly hall rather than to wait for the breaking up of the locks. A very odd and quite intrusive lady walked around asking just about everyone for comment for the Daily Prophet, a newspaper no-one had heard of. When pushed, she gave her name as Skita Reeter but wandered off when one of the parents asked her why they had never seen her newspaper in a newsagent’s.
Gradually most of the parents had come to the school and were reunited with their sons and daughters. There wasn’t much talking, and most families just wanted to go home. Vernon turned up, marched straight to Harry and Dudley, grabbed both boys by the neck and frogmarched them to the car. No-one said anything on the way back. Dudley had regained consciousness but did nothing but stare out of the window.
CHAPTER FIVE
TALKING IT OVER
Fred, the best child and teenage psychologist in town, was in no mood to see his next patient Dudley, but he could not cancel the appointment. It was his last session with him, and he did not want to throw away all the hard work that he and Dudley’s family did to help Dudley. Moreover, Fred had not forgotten the patient’s young cousin with the strange scar on the forehead who had said that he should not worry about the money as he would pay for all the counselling sessions in advance. And the cousin did it; paid it all in one go, both the sessions with Dudley and the informal sessions with the patient’s mother. The last session was now about to begin. Fred read his notes from the previous sessions to get into gear. Suddenly, Dudley came in bursting open the door.
“Welcome, my friend!” said Fred and both the corners of his mouth almost joined the corners of his eyes. Fred was expert in showing his patients that he was glad to see them even if he, at times, wasn’t really.
“I’m in time, doctor! I’m here as promised. You see, I’m alone this time as you asked me to. My mother is waiting outside.”
“Yes, you are in time. Or rather, a few minutes before your time, but it is okay. You did promise that you would knock on the door, but you forgot. But forget about that and tell me: how are things going at your end?”
Fred always asked this question while making tea for the patient. That was his way of beginning the session informally. Patients were normally not on the defensive in these informal circumstances and could easily reveal something which they would hold back in the formal sessions.
“Everything is fine”, retorted Dudley.
“So, in the light of the last session, what have you been thinking and doing?”
Dudley started telling what he had been doing that week and Fred was jotting down some of those things. The session was being recorded as usual but Fred was a doctor who always took notes. This way, he could devote all his mental energy to listening actively. He noticed that Dudley was beating about the bush, so he interrupted him.
“Have you replied to your cousin’s letter?”
“You mean his owl? Yes, I did.”
“Did you write a letter to him exactly as I asked you to write it to him? Did you write to him that you miss him and that you want him to write to you every week?”
“It’s not letter! I told you. Owl! Harry has his own mail system? Yes, I told him that I kind of miss him and want him to tell me what magic he is learning nowadays. You know, I poisoned his owl but Harry brought it back to life.”
“Yes, you have told me that and we agreed that you would ask Harry to forgive you for that and he, being a nice boy like you, forgave you. Have you thanked him for everything he has done for you? Remember, he saved you from big trouble at school. He brought you here and spent a whole week with you although his school had started. He missed his classes for one week just to be with you and your mother.”
“Yes, I have written to him and told him all that you have told me! And he says that the headmaster forgave him. And that his friends have helped him with studying that he missed. I think he hasn’t told them that he has been doing magic on me.”
Fred, stopped taking notes and looked at Dudley through his thick glasses, scratching the centre of his brow.
“I forgot to tell you that he has been writing to me continuously and asking me about how you are doing at the sessions.”
Dudley replied: “But he never asked me about the sessions in his owls that he wrote to me. And you never told me that he has been writing to you all this time.”
“Yes, because I am a doctor, so he asks me directly about the progress that we both are making with our sessions. And I was telling you about the magic when you interrupted me. He has confessed to the headmaster that he played tricks on you and your family using magic. He has apologize and formally asked to be pardoned.”
“Don’t they throw him out for using magic on us?”
“There was a big problem. He wrote about two professors, a woman who is very strict and a man who teaches them something about blending liquids, that they would not forgive him. I don’t remember their names, but Harry wrote that those two professors would have thrown him out of the school.”
“I wish they would have kicked him out,” said Dudley.
“Well, they won’t because the headmaster knew everything including all the details of how he helped you at the school as well as afterwards. Harry took a note from me to show it to the other professors as a proof of his absence for one week. And the headmaster already knew about all his activities, but he was glad that Harry confessed everything and asked for a pardon.”
“Aha! So they forgave him, just like that!”
“No, it wasn’t that easy, and it took many meetings where Harry had to explain everything to the discipline committee headed by that strict female professor. It was only after the personal intervention of the headmaster that the committee agreed not to throw him out of the school. They took away 250 points from Gryffindor, that is the name of the house at Harry’s school.”
“Oh, I wish they would send him back!”
“You told me that you are friends with him now and that you write to him and share everything with him.”
“Yes, but that way he could be with me. It’s just me and mum now after my dad.”
“I know. I am very sorry about your father. Harry wrote to me about that also. Roodlands hospital is the best hospital in Scotland and they tried their best to save him, but he got a second stroke after the first one during his surgery, so the doctors could not save him.”
“And my aunt does not visit us anymore. She used to come to see her brother but not us.”
“Dudley, you promised me to stop thinking about the negative things and focus on your life. Why don’t you think about the positive things in your life? You and your mum lost touch with your paternal aunt and lost Mr. Dursley but you got Harry. Harry has forgiven you his all and has been taking care of you since that unfortunate incident at the school. He writes letters to you and your mother regularly.”
“Owls, he writes owls to us, not letters.”
“OK. I mean owls.”
“But my mother has been nice to him too. It’s not just him. My mother asked for his forgiveness for not being nice to him and treating him badly,” said Dudley.
“I know that. Your mother is very happy that you both are now friends and she regrets that it was she who spoiled you and encouraged you to make Harry suffer. But now that everything is right again, you need to focus on your studies, training at the gym and your future. By the way, how is it going at the gym with your instructor?”
“So-so. He’s tough on me and wants me to get in shape in like one day,” groaned Dudley.
“One day? No, you have been training for two months now, but I understand what you mean. It is still a big leap forward. I can see the changes in your body. Your instructor is motivating you to work out hard and that’s all. OK, Dudley we have to finish our last meeting as I have another patient coming in after you.”
“Oh, OK. But can’t I come to see you again?”
“Today was our last session. But you can always write to me and tell me how you are doing. I would be happy to know that you are continuing the good work that you are doing. We have made a lot of progress together and I want you to stick to your routine that we both agreed upon.”
“Okay, thanks doctor!”
“Thank you, Dudley. Do stay in touch, please. And, you can always book time with my secretary, if you feel you need to talk to me. Have a nice day! Goodbye, young Dudley.
“You, too. Goodbye!”
Fred, who was a calm, experienced man, knew he had exactly five minutes till the next patient.
“Oh Dudley, you silly Muggle,” he sighed. “You’ll never know how close you came to blowing Harry’s cover.”
Fred pulled out a pen and paper and began writing a letter:
“Mr. Dumbledore, my dear old friend!”
But he did not continue writing. Changing his mind, he went to his hidden stash of copies of the Daily Prophet, which felt like his only connection to the wizarding world. He pulled out an old copy he had been saving for an occasion just like this knowing he had exactly three minutes to enjoy young Potter’s glory once more.
