Word Count: 2,108
Rating: G
Category: Post-War, Humour
Notes: Written for the 2010 Dudley Redeemed Fest. Many thanks to Ayla Pascal for betaing!
Summary: Somebody at the huge Weasley-Potter family gathering finally shows Dudley something he has needed for a long time.
Pairing: None
Warnings: Minor character deaths
Dedications: None
Completed Date: July 12, 2010

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I like her because she smiles at me and means it. — Anonymous

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Dudley squirmed uncomfortably in his chair. He suspected the chair had a nasty spell on it. Earlier, when he’d sat down, the chair was nice, plush, and pleasant; now, he swore the damned thing was shrinking around his bottom, had grown bumps on the cushion, and was giving him some serious itching problems. Or maybe he was imagining things? He wasn’t sure, but it really was getting rather tight, bumpy, and itchy, but he didn’t dare complain. Especially when he thought he saw one of those redheaded folks looking at him queerly, and it reminded him of the first magical sweets he had consumed. He would never forget what the sweet had done to him — his tongue had never been quite the same since — and he became rather cautious on what he ate at one of these gatherings.

He looked at the huge, motley group of people around some sort of an open area with these strange looking hoops. They were all cheering and yelling as some of them flew around on their brooms, throwing a red ball and dodging these dangerous and wild black balls. He recalled Harry’s stiff explanation of something called Quid Dish, and the only thing Dudley could remember was something about a golden ball with wings; the rest of the explanation sounded like some complicated algebraic equation.

Again, he shifted in his seat, and he let out a quiet but deep sigh. For the last two years or so, he’d been coming to this Weasley-Potter-and-close-friends gathering. The first time he came, he remembered the hostile aura he felt from everyone there and the masked glares he picked up from some of them. It was enough to make him want to flee, but Dudley Dursley wasn’t a chicken. He was not going to let a bunch of magical folks scare him off. So with his head held high, he attended the gathering and survived it without any major hitch. All the food and drinks he ate didn’t cause him to do anything strange — though he did wonder if they used batwings and other weird ingredients in the food — and nobody turned him into anything non-human. What they ended up doing was ignore him, with the exception of Harry.

Dudley had made the first initiative to get to know his only cousin. With Aunt Marge being childless — unless those ugly things called dogs counted, but he highly doubted that — and his father having no other siblings, Harry was really the only one left of his family since his parents had passed away. His father had died of a heart attack, and his mother, never getting over the guilt she had towards Harry and her sister, died from grief when his father had passed. He lived in his own little world of guilt, and as he grew older, he thought back to his childhood, thought about all those times he had treated Harry like shite, and he grew to regret them. But he hesitated to contact Harry because he’d figured Harry would shun him, and he wouldn’t have blamed Harry for doing that.

In the end, though, it was his dying wife’s — she’d died from AIDS-related pneumonia — last wish that convinced him that life was too short to hold onto grudges. Before she died, she’d wanted to know more about his childhood — she had always complained that he was reticent about it. He eventually caved in and told her about his magical cousin, the one she never had the chance to meet. He could tell she was fascinated by what little he could tell her. She had looked at him sadly when he said he never had contacted Harry since that time he’d shook Harry’s hand.

“Meet him,” she urged. “Before you lose the chance.”

He hadn’t listened to her then. How could he? She was dying. He wasn’t about to leave her side to go on a hunt for his cousin. No, he really couldn’t leave her. And she probably knew how he felt, so she only mentioned it one last time when she was leaving him.

Feeling empty and miserable without his wife, it took a while for Dudley to get over her death. As he wallowed in alcohol, he remembered how she’d hated his drinking, and he remembered how he’d cut down for her sake. He was willing to do anything for her, and if granting her last wish will make her happy in her afterlife, then so be it.

And he did it. He’d somehow managed to get a hold of Harry through Mrs Figg, and they’d been sort of keeping contact, with Harry inviting him to the gathering every year so far. He felt grateful that Harry had invited him, yet he didn’t enjoy going to it. Spending the whole day as an outcast was not fun, and he now knew how Harry had felt all those years before as an outcast with the Dursleys.

Dudley stifled back yet another sigh, and he knocked back what he hoped was water, or at least something that wouldn’t dissolve his teeth like acid would. Thankfully, his teeth stayed intact, and Dudley was just about to get up and go to the loo when a perky voice said, “Hi, Uncle D!”

Blinking, Dudley gaped at the friendly, cheerful, and bright face that came into his view. Lily Luna Potter. Harry’s youngest child, who at the age of eight was quite an interesting child to watch compared to her brothers and the thousands of redheaded spawns littering the whole place. Her long and messy auburn hair cascaded down her back, and she rocked back on her heel as she sucked on a lolly. Popping the lolly out of her mouth, she grinned at him. “Why are you all the way out here, Uncle D?”

“Why are you calling me that? I’m not your uncle.” Dudley winced at the stupidity of his response, but he didn’t know what else to say to her. This was the first time Lily had ever approached him; in fact she was the first person to really acknowledge him other than Harry, and with her bubbly personality, he was reminded of his wife before her condition had worsened.

Lily’s giggly voice prevented him from feeling depressed. “Then what do I call you? Daddy says you’re my first cousin once removed. That’s too long! Or should I call you ‘F-CORD’?”

“A what?”

“That’s ‘First Cousin Once Removed D’ in . . . what do you call it? That A word? Ahhh . . . acrobat?”

Dudley frowned, trying to understand this bizarre conversation, and he guessed, “Acronym?”

“Yeah! That! I made up an acronym.” She gave him a beaming smile. “Which one do you want to be called?”

It didn’t take Dudley long to come to a decision. He immediately answered, “Just call me ‘Uncle D’.”

“Okay.” She jumped into a chair next to Dudley. She pulled her legs up to her chest, and she looked at the Dish game or whatever it was called. “You like Quidditch?”

“It . . . seems . . . ” Dudley gave the game a good look. “Fun. It looks quite fun, but I don’t think I’ll like it.” Fun was not a word he’d describe it, but he wasn’t about to admit to a little girl that it looked downright scary.

Lily must have agreed with him because she wrinkled her nose and said, “I’m afraid of those Bludgers.” She clarified with Dudley’s confused look. “The black balls. I heard Daddy telling Teddy to be careful of them because Daddy remembers when it broke his arm. I don’t ever want that to break my arm!”

“Yeah,” Dudley drawled out. “I wouldn’t want to get hit by it, either.” There was a pause as Lily continued to watch the game, and Dudley took this chance to readjust his position in the blasted chair. He bit his tongue from swearing in front of her. His movement caused him to lean over to the side, and he saw his bag there. That reminded him of some Willy Wonka chocolates he kept in there, and he took one out and handed it towards Lily. “Want one?”

“What?” Lily’s eyes opened wide. “Muggle chocolate! I love those!” By then her lolly was gone, so she eagerly grabbed the bar. “Thank you, Uncle D!” She opened it up and broke off a generous piece and gave it to Dudley.

Surprised by her action, he grabbed the piece and the two of them ate the bar in companionable silence. From a distance, Dudley saw the other members of the gathering give them strange looks, some of them hostile, so he made up his mind to send her away from him. He didn’t want Lily to get teased or lectured for being around him.

But Lily surprised him. “I don’t understand why some of my family don’t like you. Why is that?” She turned her questioning brown eyes to him.

Dudley wanted to tell her to piss off. He wanted to tell her to mind her own business. But he didn’t. He was tired of the intimidating attitude, tired of being alone, and if Lily Potter, who ironically was named after the aunt he’d never met, was going to show him some compassion, then he’d accept it. “I . . . I didn’t treat your daddy very well when he used to live with me.”

“I know. I heard Mummy and Nana talk about it.”

“You sure eavesdrop a lot,” Dudley chuckled.

“Well, I am small, and I like to play behind our sofas. Not my fault they choose to sit there and talk for hours!” Giving him an impish smile, she turned solemn once more. “But you don’t treat him bad no more, right?”

“Right.”

“Then the others shouldn’t treat you bad, too!” Her eyes flashed, and Dudley found himself wondering if Lily was always this vivacious and spontaneous with her feelings.

“It’s all right, Lily. Sometimes we grown-ups are . . . stubborn, and we let things go on too long.” His explanation sounded unconvincing, but he couldn’t think of anything else to say without insulting Lily’s huge family.

“Stubborn? Yeah, you’re right. Grown-ups can be stubborn.” Her playful smile came back when she continued, “And silly!”

Dudley pretended to glare at her, and that only caused her to laugh. “Oh, fine. You spoke the truth.” He shook his head and started to laugh, not caring whether the others looked at them strangely.

“Of course. James calls me an ‘instuffable know-it-all’, and I know something else, too.”

“What?” Dudley asked, humouring her.

“You’re not bad. I like you, Uncle D. Daddy said you invest in at Mr Wonka’s chocolate factory. But he said someone named Charlie Bucket’s the owner or something? Can you take me to ‘Mr Bonka’s’ — or should that be ‘Mr Wucket’s’? — factory one day? I’m going to beg and beg and beg Mummy and Daddy to let me go there with you! I want to see the Loompa thingie and compare them to house elves!”

Once Dudley figured out what she was saying, he said, “All right. I’ll take you there, if your parents allow it.”

Just then, the game finally ended, and all the players flew back down to the ground, and the noise level around them grew. Lily scrambled out of her chair, and her tiny, pale hand reached out to grab Dudley’s larger and darker one. “Let’s go ask them now! Come on, Uncle D.”

As he allowed Lily to drag him away from that awful bunk of a chair, Lily’s enthusiasm made him feel happier than he had for a long time. Someone in this gigantic family liked him. There wasn’t rhyme or reason in Lily’s thinking, but she genuinely liked him, and this cheered Dudley up. He could sense a new change within him. He could see this as a new opportunity to get to know his cousin’s family, and he’d do it right. His hand slipped inside of his pocket, and he touched his mobile. Soon as Lily cajoled her parents into saying yes, he’d be calling a certain Mr Bonka or Wucket — he had to give Lily points for humour and creativity — and he’d tell the owner to arrange a very special tour for her.

And maybe even a larger tour in the future if the rest of the Potters and all those redheaded devils decided to visit the chocolate factory.

Whatever happened, Dudley would be ready for it, and he privately thanked his wife for everything.