The summer of his fifteenth birthday, Dudley Dursley is woken up almost every night by cries of “DON’T KILL CEDRIC, PLEASE, DON’T KILL CEDRIC” coming from his cousin’s room. He taunts his cousin about it of course, because that’s just what he does. But sometimes the cries still echo in his head, and he wonders about this Cedric.
Two years later his parents and him are forced out of their house because some bad wizard is after his cousin. He doesn’t understand what it all really means, but for the first time he understands the seriousness of that world his cousin is part of. And once again those cries of “don’t kill Cedric” fill his head.
He doesn’t see his cousin for two years after that, but whenever he passes a group of funny-looking people wearing robes on the street he tries to catch bits of conversation, waiting to hear something about Harry (he doesn’t know much about his cousin, but he does know he is some kind of a celebrity in the wizarding world). He doesn’t learn much except that there was a war and Harry played a role in putting an end to it.
One day he works up the courage to ask a group of those people if they know where he can find Harry Potter. Some old wizard tells him Harry Potter’s been known to be staying at his godfather’s old house, 12 Grimmauld Place.
On Harry’s nineteenth birthday, Dudley sends him a card. It doesn’t say much, just “Happy birthday. - Dudley x”. Then a few months later, on Halloween night, Dudley has drunk one too many glasses of wine, and he decides to just pay a visit.
When he gets there of course he can’t find number twelve, so he just stands there in the street and cries out Harry’s name until Harry hears him. Harry is home alone, and a half-drunk glass of something that looks like whisky is sitting on the table.
“What are you doing here, Dudley?” Harry asks. He sounds tired.
“I’m not sure. How’ve you been?”
They stay up all night talking. It’s awkward at first, but there’s something comforting about talking to someone you know next to nothing about, and they end up getting a lot off their chests. Dudley tells Harry about the fight he got into with his parents, and how they cut him off as a result, and how he has to work a job as a cashier to pay his rent. Harry tells him a bit about what’s been happening in the wizarding world those past few years, and Dudley suddenly has a lot of respect and admiration for his cousin.
At some point, Dudley asks to know about that Cedric bloke Harry used to talk about in his sleep, and Harry tells him about how Cedric died. Dudley thinks how unfair it is to die this young, and to die as a ‘spare’.
The next morning, Dudley shakes Harry’s hand before leaving. He even gives him a little smile.
They decide to make this a monthly thing where they get together and talk about what’s happening in their respective worlds.
Seven years later, Dudley is married and his wife is pregnant with a boy.
When the baby is born, and they cut the umbilical cord, the cord grows back almost immediately. The doctors are astonished but Dudley just laughs between tears of joy. He’s got a wizard for a baby. And he’s beautiful.
A week later Harry comes to visit, to see the baby. It’s the first time he’s been to Dudley’s place, they always used to meet up at his place (he’s moved from Grimmauld Place since he’s been living with Ginny, and now young James and Albus). Dudley introduces his wife Amelia, who’s only recently had to find out about the magical side of Dudley’s family, and is both excited and a bit freaked out.
“And this,” he says as Harry picks up the baby, “is Cedric”.
Harry looks up questioningly, and Dudley gives him a small smile, that exact same smile he gave him the morning after that Halloween night he came drunkenly shouting his name in his street ,all those years ago.
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