[Fic] "Points of Division" -- Harry Potter

[edenfalling]

Dudley Dursley became a fairly decent person by Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I always wondered what happened to him afterwards, and whether the potential for magic continued to run in his family.

[ETA: The AO3 crosspost is now up!]

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Points of Division
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The morning of Iris Dursley's eleventh birthday, an owl arrived at Number 12 Miller St.

Dudley Dursley was not surprised. Iris hadn't caused any outright impossibilities -- nothing he could put his finger on, like he could have done for his cousin if he'd known what to look for back then -- but chance had a way of playing up around his daughter. A gust of wind blowing a curtain aside at a fortunate moment, rain drying up for two minutes while she dashed from the garage to the house, static electricity snapping out at the old tomcat who'd tried to claw her up when she was six: little things like that. Added up, they meant magic.

He knew when his daughter turned eleven, he'd have to give her up to the strange, sideways world that had swallowed his aunt and his cousin, and unsettled his parents' entire lives. He didn't like the idea of sending her away for most of the year, to a place he could never follow, but he thought about the casual wonders he'd seen when he stood as a groomsman at Harry's wedding, and he envied Iris a little.

He'd told her about magic and wizards; about broomsticks and candies that could make you change colors or grow feathers; about castles and wands and owls; and about war and death and learning that all people mattered, no matter how strange they might be. But he wasn't much good at stories -- he was always a bit lost when he couldn't work with his hands -- and as she got older, Iris told him he should stop mixing fairy-tales and Alice in Wonderland and just stick to braiding her hair when he wanted to "do the father-daughter thing."

Maureen was no help. When they first got serious, Dudley had warned her that magic seemed to run in his family, but he'd always figured she was humoring him when she said she believed. After all, he didn't have anything convincing to show her, beyond the one picture of Harry's wedding, but everyone in that photo had been on their best behavior, so they never did much more than shuffle a few inches from side to side and switch from smiles to laughter, and those changes were small enough for Maureen to shrug off as a bad memory for details.

Dudley opened the kitchen window to let in the owl, ignoring Maureen and Iris's shouts of alarm. He thought they would believe him now.

He wondered what else would change.

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Inspired by the 6/15/09 15_minute_fic word #114: deliver

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...You know, I thought I was done writing HP fanfiction, beyond finishing my outstanding WIPs. Apparently 15_minute_fic is determined to make a liar out of me. *wry face*

Comments

[askerian]

ohh, that's awesome. I have been wondering about Dudley too. I must admit i've been really quite fond of him since the dementor attack. XD;

"strange, sideway world" is beautiful, and I like how Iris tells her father to just braid her hair instead of telling her stories. XD (also, hee! family naming tradition. ♥ )

[edenfalling]

I like family naming traditions. :-) And Dudley, I think, always had the potential to be a decent person. He just didn't have any training in what decency was until after the dementor attack, when Harry gave him a rather unmistakable practical demonstration.

Anyway, I like the idea of Dudley going into some sort of practical job that requires a lot of craftsmanship and working with his hands -- maybe fine carpentry, maybe car repairs, I don't know exactly -- that's also lower-status than Petunia and Vernon want, disregarding his parents' protests and nagging, getting married, raising a family, and learning to be happy. I figure that if Harry can manage happiness, Dudley certainly can too.

[rurounitriv.livejournal.com]

Oh, I love this. Yeah, Dudley was a toad when the series started, but you could see him growing up and turning into someone who maybe possibly might wind up being a pretty decent guy over the course of the series, in those few times you saw him.

Nice to see he learned from his parents' mistakes with Harry.

[edenfalling]

I got the feeling, from DH, that Dudley had grown up enough to really look at his parents, and that he didn't like a lot of what he saw. And if I can't get canonically redeemed Draco, I will take redeemed Dudley, goshdarnit. ;-)

Besides, I enjoy stories about family connections and the cycle of generations, so I like to imagine that Dudley and Harry kept in touch -- letters on Christmas and birthdays, maybe a brief visit every couple years -- and that Dudley, while never exactly comfortable with magic, at least accepted it as part of the world rather than considering it an unnatural perversion. (And now I am wondering what Petunia would make of a magical granddaughter... *flees plotbunnies*)

[rurounitriv.livejournal.com]

Dudley was spoiled, self-centered and ignorant. He wasn't raised deliberately racist and trained from birth to believe that malice, deceit and oneupsmanship were the only way to live his life.

*Feeds bunnies supervitamins and sets them to chase...*

[annearchy.livejournal.com]

Very nice, Liz. You have better feelings toward Dudley than I do, and you've made him a decent-enough person that (unlike Petunia) he doesn't go ballistic at the idea of having someone magical in the family.

[edenfalling]

Oh, Dudley was a horrible little twit at the start of the series, but I think some of that wasn't his fault (he was encouraged in all his bad habits, rather than taught proper behavior), and he either grew out of or actively decided to change a lot of his unpleasantness by the end of the series. I respect that effort, and I like to think that he and Harry managed to heal the breach in the Evans family, the same way Harry and his friends managed to heal the much larger-scale breach in wizarding society. That makes for a nice mirroring effect. :-)

[erised1810.livejournal.com]

and what perfect timing. you're still as good with tiny character sketches as you used to be (seeing as i slipped into your archeve post this weekend and reread some old faves. Yay for helping us finish dudley's story and round him off this way. He still sounds slightly blundering but most of all just nervous and more thinky and grown into his own character. i love how the theme of flowers continues in the family like magic does.
It's like me still reading fics when last year i signed up for a rec community and said it was the last time i'd pop into a fic site. and here i am rereading the hp books yet again and stuffing my pc with fics. harrumph. anyway. those teensy 15minute fic word prompts like to come with bunnies of their own attached. And personally every time i tried one of my own characters or something from the book i was just reading, there was always an hp character popping up. as if saying 'hey, i've been in your brain the longest, i claim full rights here'.
heh. one day we'll really stop though. When we browse ff.net and find someone writing fic for our own published novels *snort*
good work though. makes awhole good stack of dursley vignets by now and it's great to read those in sequence.

[edenfalling]

Thank you! I do like the Dursleys. Vernon is a bit over the top, but Petunia and Dudley feel very realistic to me and I like the way they live, sometimes against their wills, at the intersection of the Muggle and wizarding worlds.

It is funny how persistent my HP ideas are. I open the 15_minute_fic prompts intending to write something original or for one of my more 'current' fandoms (Chronicles of Narnia or Star Trek, at this point), and then while I'm turning the word over in my head, an HP plotbunny slides right in, blocks any other possibilities, and refuses to be dislodged.

Next time I may fight that derailment until I get an Ekanu story instead. *grin*

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

I really enjoyed this - I loved the bit with the hairbraiding and Dudley's voice was spot on - I wanted to know what changed that he became Harry best man - I didn't expect that.

[edenfalling]

Thank you! I am fond of the hair braiding myself. :-)

As for the wedding... possibly I have my terminology wrong, or men of honor are an American thing that doesn't translate to Britain? Dudley was not the best man -- that was Ron, of course -- but he was a man of honor, which means he stood next to Ron, probably accompanying Neville. Ginny had Luna and Hermione as her maid of honor and bridesmaid, respectively, and another bridesmaid to balance Dudley. (In my private headcanon, she talked Xanthe Delaflor into being her second bridesmaid, but as Xanthe is an OC, you can fill in the line with any female DA member.)

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

My bad - I'm used to hearing the term 'groomsmen' not 'men of honor' so I confused that with 'best man.'

[edenfalling]

Hmm. I am, on reflection, not actually sure whether 'groomsman' is more common than 'man of honor,' but it's almost certainly less confusing! *edits fic accordingly*

[rianax.livejournal.com]

Echoing the love for the 'strange sideways world,' this a lovely ending for Dudley. Though I wonder if Maureen could possibly skip the magical boarding school entirely without any serious negative effects.

One of my sticking points with the series is the complete writing off of most of the human race by the Wizarding World and the treatment of Muggles from The Prime Minster getting a sit down shut up talk as a magical race war is spilling into the streets of London or Hermione mindraping her parents and shoving them off to Australia.

The magical world has a bad habit of stealing children and not giving them back.

[rianax.livejournal.com]

Iris not Maureen, sorry I am not very coherent at this hour.

[edenfalling]

No worries; it was clear what you meant!

I tend to think that people with magic do need some training so they can control the power -- we have Ariana Dumbledore as a horrific example of what can happen without control -- so Hogwarts is necessary at least through, say, OWLs. But sixth and seventh year seem to be optional (though most people forget that and consider them mandatory, especially if they want non-menial jobs in the wizarding world), so you could probably go back to Muggle life at 15 if you wanted.

It's just that Hogwarts is also indoctrinating the students to consider the wizarding world better (and cooler, and more interesting) than the Muggle world, and to think of themselves as witches and wizards first. So unless Dudley and Maureen do some very careful and delicate counter-propaganda (which seems unlikely, for Dudley) and also make sure she keeps learning real-world things like, say, algebra and normal history and science, so she can slip back into regular school for a couple years in her teens, going to Hogwarts automatically cuts students off from their previous lives.

...I wonder if Hermione would realize that and start a day-school option? Then again, I don't think Hermione has noticed that this is a problem.

[rianax.livejournal.com]

Hermione dropped seeing her folks by fourth year, obviously lied to them about the dangers of her boarding school, mindraped and packed them of to Australia when a race war erupted.

I wonder if Rose and Hugo even see their maternal grandparents.

The wizarding world is an isolated, inbred, and ignorant community and I doubt two decades will allow much real reform.