Chapter 56 Dudley
Chapter 56 Dudley
Lucius left swiftly. Gathering himself together and swanning out the door letting it clang shut behind him.
Dudley pulled his trousers up but otherwise remained motionless on the damp floor, allowing the cold stone to seep slowly into his bones, it felt good to be numb. He felt like an empty glass, someone had tipped everything inside him down the sink.
Dudley wasn’t sure how long he was left on the floor but by the time the skinny man returned his whole body was shivering. The skinny man threw a uniform at Dudley and instructed him to ‘dress’ his voice was curt and gruff.
Then he secured Dudley’s feet and wrists with thick metal shackles and large collar was secured to his neck, it was attached to a chain that the skinny man held on to like Dudley was an Alsatian. He yanked harshly on Dudley’s neck and dragged him from the room.
Dudley was twitchy and walked with jerky steps struggling to contain his shivering. The skinny man took him into a small courtyard. There was no grass only sharp stones underfoot. Dudley stopped, he had been in a sort of trance since Lucius left, moving and breathing but not really here. But he came back to himself with a crash. Two dementors had joined them. The terror they elicited in Dudley was paralysing. Their familiar rasping breaths rattled underneath their hoods. Dudley knew the dementors kiss, the idea of it happening again was beyond comprehension.
The skinny man yanked on his neck and Dudley was forced to continue walking.
The dementors didn’t attack, they just hovered ominously following the skinny man as he led Dudley into another building.
It was hundreds of stories tall and perfectly triangular. A great slab of black stone reaching directly upwards into the salty air. He was led up a winding and endless staircase. The steps went on and on Dudley was panting before they were even halfway up. The staircase was cramped and claustrophobic and the steps weren’t uniform in size which resulted in Dudley continually tripping. He could find no rhythm as he walked. Dudley could barely breathe when he reached the top.
He was led along a corridor lined with cells. Each cell was identical, metal bars at the front and three black stone walls inside. Inside each cell was a solitary figure. One man had hair to his knees and a filthy beard that hung to his belly button, he had no teeth and he screamed at Dudley as he hobbled past. Another woman was sat cross legged in the centre of her cell pulling out her hair and quietly eating it. But most prisoners were seeking solitude in the darkest corners of their cells and they ignored Dudley was he passed. The skinny man stopped abruptly in front of an empty cell and pushed Dudley inside.
Panic slammed into him. The thought of being left alone, here. It wasn’t real, it couldn’t be happening.
‘Please, you can’t leave me here! Please please! Don’t leave me here!’
But the skinny man locked the cell door and left without a word. Not even a look. Dudley scrambled along the floor to huddle in a corner. He drew his knees up to his chest and started to gently cry.
‘Please Draco. Please Draco. Please Draco.’ Dudley muttered the words under his breath as he rocked backwards and forwards. As though by saying his name Dudley could keep Draco safe or summon him close.
The dementors didn’t come for him straight away, they lingered outside his cell hovering threateningly. The anticipation was crushing. Like seeing the train that was about to run you down but being unable to move out of the way. As night fell they finally came for him. It was hours after he’d arrived and the dingy cell was almost pitch black. There was no window in his cell but Dudley could still hear the waves crashing on the shoreline. Dudley had always thought of all dementors as clones of each other, the same darkness and the same evil concealed under their hoods but after staring at these two for hours he could tell them apart. One was slightly bigger than the other. The bigger one had a more restless energy to it, it was always moving, it would sway slightly from left to right. The smaller one was somehow worse than the bigger one. Dudley couldn’t see its eyes, he didn’t even know if dementors had eyes but he knew that thing was staring at him. Boring holes into him.
The small one came for him first. It floated through the bars like they didn’t exist. Every muscle inside Dudley tensed in preparation but it was impossible to prepare for. It was worse than he remembered. A wet sucking sound rattled from its mouth and Dudley felt the light sucked out of him. It was so easy like tearing wet tissue paper. The light inside him dissolved into nothing and was sucked into the dementor. Dudley could physically feel himself falling apart. His soul, his body, his mind, it was all being dismantled brick by brick.
He saw Draco saying his name for the last time, his mother’s murdered body on the floor of Malfoy Manor, his father’s head smashed on a flagstone floor.
Then there was something else, something inside him shifted, like he’d been living his whole life in one direction and someone had just put him into reverse.
The fortress in his mind cracked, a hairline fracture but it let something small bleed through.
And then he was somewhere else. Familiar and warm. He was inside Privet Drive.
He was playing on the floor with his cars zooming them along the track and crashing them into one another. The living room was a hideous magnolia, accented with dusty pink. The colours it had been when Dudley was in primary school. The curtains were a buttery yellow and his mother was drawing them for the evening.
At first it was nice to see them like, he could breathe again, he was no longer being pulled apart. He was home with his mum and dad. His parents were younger, his father’s hair much thicker and his mother was chubbier than she had been the last time he saw her. His father was drilling a hole in the wall, he was attempting to hang a shelf above the fireplace. Vernon stepped back, looking rather pleased with himself.
‘There we go petunia.’
‘Perfect’ his mum answered reaching for a photograph that had been placed on a side table. Hearing their voices was a balm on Dudley’s pain. It was his new school photo that she was holding, he was wearing a ridiculous boater hat adorned with a maroon ribbon and smiling widely, exposing gaps in his teeth. His mother reached up to place the photo on the shelf. As she pulled back she knocked the shelf dislodging it and sending both the shelf and the photo tumbling down to the ground.
Dudley watched himself reach out a hand and freeze the photo and the shelf, they hovered impossibly in midair. Dudley had stopped them from hitting the stone of the fireplace below.
He watched his own expression change from shock to disbelief.
His face settled on excitement as he realised what he had done, he gently allowed the shelf and the photograph to settle on the fireplace. Young Dudley was awestruck as he looked up at his father. But Vernon’s face was a picture of fury. Dudley swivelled, looking to his mother, less sure of himself now. She was pale and horror stuck. Dudley remembered this moment, he had hidden it from himself, but he could recall it now and he knew what was coming next, his guts felt heavy and he wanted to scream at himself to run away.
His father approached and gave him an almighty slap around the face.
‘You will never do that again. Do you understand?’ A mixture of fear and distain in his voice.
Vernon stomped out of the room letting the door slam shut behind him. Dudley’s eyes welled and he began to cry. He ran to his mother for protection. She stepped back from him like he was infectious.
‘You must never do that again.’ She said in a small voice.
‘I won’t! I promise I won’t! I’m sorry.’
Petunia stepped past him and walked out the door leaving him alone and confused. Young Dudley collapsed to the floor vowing never to let that part of himself to the surface again.
Dudley left himself crying in the living room, he was back in Azkaban but his eyes were tightly closed. His head hurt, like someone was slicing through it with a blunt knife, the crack had become a gash and the dam had burst. The truth flooded out and it drowned Dudley. He had magic. He was a wizard. And then the blackness exploded and he was something else entirely.