Dudley!?

Well. 

That was horrifying. 

At first they had no idea what was happening, just that they wanted it to stop and never happen again. Now they know they were just born, all their memories from another life intact, so reborn or reincarnated probably fits better, which is weird since they don’t remember dying.

They blink up at the blurry figure of who they’re guessing is their new ‘mother’ as she coos down at them, finally zoning in on to what she’s actually saying.

“-ike our little Dudders!” 

What.

Please say their name isn’t ‘Dudders’ now, they refuse to answer to that.

“Dudley Dursley. Going to grow up just like his daddy he is,” a large blurry shape says from next to them.

Dudley Dursley?! What are they Harry Potter fans or something? Even if they are, Dudley!?! They narrow their eyes at the blurry figures, trying to glare, but the woman just coos louder, apparently finding it adorable and the man just laughs. They give up with a sigh, too tired for whatever is going on, and settle back to go to sleep.

They’ll figure it out later. 

&&&

Almost two years later and his parents are still calling him Dudley since he still can’t string more than a few words together and they think ‘no Dud no’ means he doesn’t want something, not that he despises being called anything with the word Dud in it. He’ll have to wait until his mouth catches up to his brain and he can tell them to call him Lee or something. 

He sighs from where he sits in the centre of his bedroom, surrounded by piles of plastic toys he doesn’t like. At least he doesn’t have to pretend to play with them like he normally does when his ‘mother’ won’t leave his side, any other time he would celebrate being alone for a bit, but his ‘mother’ was far too quiet this morning and his ‘father’ was mysteriously missing from the table. Speaking of his ‘mother’ she’s back, strangely quiet just like this morning as she takes him down to lunch where his ‘father’ is sitting, face looking red with anger. 

‘Fathers’ face quickly goes from red to purple when suddenly, a babies cry sounds out from… somewhere in the house? Why is there a baby in the house?  

“B’by?” he tries to ask.

“It’s nothing sweety,” ‘mother’ replies with a strained smile.

No it is not nothing, a baby is crying! He immediately raises his hands, straightening his body as he does and slips out of his high chair to quickly toddle towards the noise. He reaches the cupboard under the stairs with a sinking heart, hoping he’s hearing it wrong. He throws open the door before his ‘parents’ can stop him and has to hold back tears at the sight of the boy, a little younger than him, with wet green eyes and half dried blood smeared across his forehead. He hurries inside to pull the boy close and make soothing noises as he strokes his hair. The boy tucks his head into his shoulder, cries fading into sniffles as he snuggles closer.

“Dudley!” his ‘mother’ cries. “Get away from that!”

That? That?! He is not an object, he's a child!

“B’by,” he snaps, and if they won’t look after him, “ma b’by.”

He feels a hand try to pull him away and he decides to do something he hasn’t done yet in this life since he was trying to make things easier for his new ‘parents,’ he wails. There are a few more attempts to separate them until they finally seem to realise he would sooner bite them then let go. They leave to go argue about something in the kitchen and he takes the chance to pull away a little to check on the boy. He hums soothingly at him when he whines at the loss of contact and lifts his sleeve to wipe at the blood on his head, wanting to check for an injury. He finds one almost straight away. 

One cutting down from his hairline to his eyebrow like a bolt of lightning. 

A boy with messy black hair, emerald green eyes and a lightning bolt scar just arrived at the Dursleys.

Oh no.