“I still don’t think this is a good idea,” Harry said through gritted teeth.
“Nonsense, darling,” Theo said with the jovial, flippant air Harry had become so accustomed to. “As I’ve said, I merely want to meet your blood relations. Put faces to names and all that.”
Theo grinned. Harry groaned.
Harry had no idea what was about to happen, but he was certain that it wouldn’t be pleasant.
It was just days after Voldemort had fallen. Snape and the Malfoys were all in lock-up, awaiting trial, and everyone else was in a frenzy about how exactly to secure their freedom.
Then, to top it all off, Kingsley had approached Harry to ask a favour. Apparently, the Dursleys, who had been in hiding under Order protection for nearly the last year, were being rather uncooperative in regards to their release.
Huge surprise.
Harry hadn’t gotten all of the details about how or why, but upon hearing the news of Voldemort’s defeat, his uncle had insisted that it must be a ruse. According to Hestia Jones and Dedalus Diggle, Uncle Vernon had adamantly insisted on seeing proof that Harry was alive and well, before trusting any news that it was, in fact, safe for them to vacate the home they’d been hiding out in.
Harry marvelled at this development, considering how vehemently his uncle had mistrusted the Order’s protection in the first place.
He had, however, agreed to help Kingsley with the request, but was quite dismayed to have to leave Hermione and the others for any length of time, rather than continuing to support in the plans for having their turncoat allies released.
This was all the more reason why he was aggravated about Theo’s insistence to accompany him.
They were just arriving at the Apparition point when Harry turned to Theo to express this for the millionth time, but Theo held up a hand.
“I’m already here with you, so how about we just go through with this?” Theo said, then made a face that always seemed to melt Harry to his core. It was a mix between a smarmy, smirky eyebrow raise, and puppy dog eyes.
As far as he was concerned, there was no one else who could pull off such a look as could Theodore Nott.
“I can’t believe how well that works on me. Is it some kind of obscure Dark magic you invoke using only your facial muscles? Something like the Imperius?”
A thoughtful look came over Theo as he tilted his head to the side. “Actually, Imperius isn’t Dark, it’s neutral. It’s the use it gets put to that has it classified as Unforgivable.”
Harry raised an eyebrow at this. “Better mention that to Hermione, she’s been writing something about Unforgivables.”
“I’m sure she already knows, Potter, and you’re stalling.”
Throwing his own smirk, Harry leaned in and brought his lips to Theo’s ear as he murmured, “I can’t decide if I love or hate how well you see through me.”
Theo turned his head, so that their lips were millimetres apart and replied, “You’ve loved it since the first day in Italy.”
Their lips were so close. Harry was amazed that his heart would still thump at the prospect of kissing this wizard, as if each time was their first all over again.
Just as that thought ran through his mind, he felt Theo’s breath hit his lips as he whispered, “Let’s go.”
Leaving shivers running up Harry’s spine, Theo turned toward the Apparition point. Harry looked down as Theo pulled him along, and wondered at what point they’d begun holding hands.
* * *
As they approached the small safe-house where the Dursleys had been hiding, Harry could already recognise the raised voices of his aunt and uncle before he and Theo had even reached the front door.
Harry rang the bell with trepidation, and the voices inside grew louder.
“As I have told you, Vernon, you needn’t wait a moment longer if you would just let me get the damned door!”
Harry’s eye widened, as he thought he recognised that voice, though would have never expected that particular tone to be emanating from—
“Dedalus,” Harry said, as the man wrenched open the door.
Gone were the mauve top hat and cheery demeanour that the man had worn last summer, to be replaced by frazzled, thinning hair and a look of utter harassment. Upon seeing Harry, however, relief seemed to wash over the man’s very aura.
“Harry Potter!” Dedalus squeaked, then tipped his head to the skies as he cried, “Oh merciful Merlin!”
Harry didn’t have even a moment’s warning before he was being dragged bodily into the safe house. Theo followed, hand still clasped to Harry’s, but Harry couldn’t see Theo’s reaction to all of this, as his eyes were glued to the family of three who stood before him.
His Aunt Petunia hadn’t changed. Still a frail, fragile woman. Still with a scowl affixed to her face, though with that same hint of curiosity Harry had seen in her eyes the day they’d departed from each other’s company.
His uncle and cousin, however, were almost unrecognisable.
Dudley had slimmed down considerably, but he’d long ago turned most of his bulk to muscle. Still, there was a clear difference in his size, presumably due to the rationing of food that had gone on during the war. He still looked muscular, however, and had clearly found a way to keep up with his physical fitness while in hiding.
The thing that surprised Harry was that his uncle had seemingly done the same. In fact, he almost wouldn’t have known it was Vernon Dursley who stood before him, had the man not been wearing such a familiar expression of annoyance upon seeing Harry come through the door. His uncle had shrunk considerably in size, and seemed to have taken on the same fitness regime as his son.
The sight was so foreign and bizzare, that Harry merely gaped, open-mouthed.
When his eyes travelled over to his cousin, he saw a mirrored expression there.
Then, without warning, Dudley’s voice was filling the whole entryway.
“Shouldn’t you be checking him for Polyjuice?!”
Harry and Theo exchanged a look of bewilderment, while Aunt Petunia looked between Harry and Dudley, registering her son’s words with alarm.
Uncle Vernon appeared to be grumbling under his breath, fist clenching by his side.
“Oh, very well,” Dedalus said, and Harry noted that the man’s tone towards Dudley was far friendlier than his with Uncle Vernon. “We’ve done away with such procedures in large part, but if it will confirm what your father so adamantly believes to be untrue… Merlin knows why...” he trailed off, grumbling as he extracted his wand from his robes.
Turning the wand gingerly on Harry, Dedalus said, “What were your cousin’s departing words to you when leaving for this safehouse last summer?”
“Oh! I know! Can I answer? It’ll be a twofer,” Theo cried.
“That won’t be necessary, Mr. Nott,” Dedalus said matter-of-factly.
Theo pouted as Harry said, “He told me he didn’t think I was a waste of space.” His eyes connected with Dudley’s, but while Harry felt rather amused by the memory, his cousin seemed dismayed.
“There,” Dedalus said, gesturing around at Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia with exasperation evident in his tone. “You see?! It’s like I said!”
Dedalus then launched into a rant that included the phrases, “I told you so,” and “Could have taken our word for it, rather than...”
Then, Theo’s voice was taking up the entire space, cutting off Dedalus’ speech.
“If I may interject,” he said, stepping forward and not waiting for anyone’s permission to go on. “I, for one, am glad that you all insisted on seeing Harry alive and well. Whatever your reasons exactly, I am choosing to see it as the first shred of concern you’ve ever actually shown for him, and therefore, something to be celebrated!”
Then, Theo pulled a bag from his robes that Harry had no memory of Theo procuring, and said, “I’m making cocktails, where’s your bar area?”
The question was directed at no Dursley in particular. Instead, Theo gazed around at all three of them, clearly enjoying their bemused expressions.
While Uncle Vernon was far more slight a man than he’d once been, he could still point a huge finger like nobody’s business.
“Who is this, Potter?!” Uncle Vernon said.
Before Harry or Theo could reply, Dudley interjected in a tone of surprised recognition. “Your boyfriend,” he said in nearly a whisper.
This seemed to please Theo, because he stepped forward with a grin on his face.
Harry could not suspend the look of shock on his face at seeing Theo wrap an arm around his cousin’s shoulders. “That’s absolutely right, Big D. Now be a good lad and show me to the glasses and ice, will you?”
“Uh, s- sure,” was Dudley’s murmured reply as he and Theo disappeared around the corner.
Harry was certain that Dedalus would object to this, but the man merely straightened up, eyes fixed on Theo’s retreating back, and followed them out of the room.
“Cocktails at this hour!” Uncle Vernon cried as he followed as well, presumably to continue admonishing them for their choices.
This left Harry alone with his aunt, who he now realised had been staring at him through the entire exchange.
Her voice was so quiet that he would not have known she was speaking had they not been the only two people in the entryway of the house.
“Is it true?”
Harry considered her words. Considered the weight and meaning behind them. Then, he simply nodded at the woman, who, in this light, seemed to resemble his mother in ways he had never noticed before. This was especially evident to him now, given that he’d been face-to-face with his mother’s almost real-life form recently, all thanks to the Resurrection Stone.
“Yes,” Harry breathed. “He’s dead.”
Without warning, his aunt lunged forward, and if Harry hadn’t already had his back so close to a wall, he would have fallen over as she flung her arms around him in an embrace. As the woman sobbed into his shoulder, Harry continued to marvel at the foreignness of the whole situation.
The outburst did not last very long, however, as Aunt Petunia seemed to come back to herself, straightening up and smoothing out the fabric of her blouse and quickly wiping away the evidence of her emotion. It was then that Harry realised he hadn’t returned her embrace whatsoever.
Harry found that he was too befuddled to feel badly about it.
However, he did remember the exchange that he and Aunt Petunia had had before parting ways last year, and thought he rather understood her outburst. Relief at the news of her sister’s killer being truly vanquished had to come with a fair amount of relief, and therefore emotional release.
“I apologise,” Aunt Petunia murmured, still fiddling with pulling down the hem of her blouse and not making eye contact.
Harry’s eyebrows flew to the ceiling as he looked upon the woman who had never once shown him a shred of decency, her words echoing through his mind.
The woman took a deep breath, seeming to steel herself before looking up at him through watery eyes.
Then, she said something that Harry would not have been able to believe had he not seen her lips move along with the words. “I am just glad that you are alright.”
There was no further for Harry’s eyebrows to move, they’d long ago disappeared into his fringe, but he imagined them moving up to the very top of his skull in that moment.
“ You’re glad that… excuse me?” he said, not caring in the slightest whether he sounded rude. He very much intended the rudeness.
To his continued surprise, his aunt looked down at the floor upon hearing this. She seemed to be nodding to herself, having some sort of internal battle with what to say next.
“A lot has changed here…” she said, trailing off, her mouth still hanging open for a long moment before she added, “Harry.”
Harry blinked back at her. He could not remember ever being addressed this way by any of the Dursleys.
Ignoring his astonishment, she went on. “I… we… we’re getting… getting help.”
Harry screwed up his face in confusion by way of reply.
“Vernon and I, we… what I mean to say is… we’ll be working with a… a therapist.”
The last word had been eked out as if by some external force.
“We’ve had a lot of time here to… reflect.”
Her eyes locked with his, and many unspoken things passed between them.
Harry had never considered that his aunt and uncle would change much. His cousin, perhaps, as he’d shown signs of shifting his opinions of Harry at the time of their departure. That, and the fact that Dudley had just been a child, going along with what his parents had set forth as the norm.
Dudley really was astonishingly similar to Draco Malfoy, and Harry had to laugh at that thought. His aunt and uncle, however, really had no excuse for their horrid behaviour.
Then again, Draco’s parents had become surprisingly sympathetic figures in Harry’s mind. Still, the Malfoys had done a lot of things out of love for their son, and Harry was certain that his aunt and uncle did not love him.
Harry shook this thought away and looked back up to his aunt. “Well, I hope that goes well for you both,” he said, finding that he actually did mean it, however uncertain he was about the efficacy of such an endeavour. He then made to walk past her, heading to wherever Theo was surely holding court.
Before Harry could do so, she put a bony hand on his shoulder, stopping him in a far more gentle way than he’d ever experienced and said, “Thank you.”
Unsure precisely what the woman was thanking him for, Harry merely nodded, then continued on his way. Given his recent revelations regarding Tom Riddle, Harry found that he was grateful to hear his aunt expressing some remorse, if not for his sake, then for the sake of her own soul.
* * *
“So then, Harry whips off his cloak of invisibility and yells, ‘Tom!’ - that was Voldemort’s name before he changed it to Voldemort, you see. Drove him absolutely bonkers when Harry called him that. Anyway, so the whole hall goes dead silent, all eyes on him—”
“Theo,” Harry interjects as he enters the room to find his boyfriend in his element. Dudley was seated at the kitchen table, leaning forward with rapt attention. Dedalus was similarly enthralled. Uncle Vernon sat back in his own chair, seemingly entranced by the cocktail in his hand more so than the tale Theo was telling.
“Hello, darling, I was just regaling your relations with tales of your heroism and bravery!”
“Yes, I noticed that,” Harry deadpanned.
“Forever modest, our Harry, but you all probably don’t know that side of him. I imagine he’s had to keep his guard way up around you lot for all the time you’ve known him.”
Uncle Vernon looked confused, but Dudley began to sputter a response. To this, Theo held up a hand.
“Don’t trouble yourself, Big D, I imagine you’re halfway decent somewhere in there,” he said, gesturing vaguely at Dudley’s person. “You, however,” Theo said, turning his own pointed finger on Uncle Vernon. “I’m not sure there’s much hope left for you, Dursley.”
Uncle Vernon spit out his drink, then immediately seemed to regret it before saying, “Excuse me?!”
“You’re excused,” Theo replied, then went on. “I know my Aunt Lil is good, but I’m not sure what she’ll make of you, to be honest.”
Harry’s eyes widened at this information. Theo’s aunt was the therapist that Aunt Petunia mentioned? How?
“Your… you… what…” Uncle Vernon sputtered, but Theo had risen from his seat and turned to address Dedalus.
“I will leave this with you, sir,” Theo said, gesturing to the bottle of liquor and various cocktail accoutrements on the table. “Please continue with the celebration of finally being out of the company of these people.”
“Mr. Nott,” Dedalus said, standing up and grinning broadly at Theo. “I do wish you would stay and continue the tale. We haven’t had exact news of the goings on from the battle yet.”
“My apologies, Mr. Diggle, but I don’t think Mr. Potter over here would appreciate me blathering on. I promise, however, that all will be revealed via the trial proceedings. Now that you’re, uh… released from your duties here, I expect you will be able to attend!”
“Fair. That is fair, Mr. Nott,” the man said, looking around the room and smiling, seemingly at the idea of finally being done with this assignment. Then, he held up his glass in a cheers with Theo.
“Our work here is done, then?” Theo asked.
Harry nodded once, and that was enough to dislodge Theo from his place in the kitchen.
Harry hadn’t expected to even come into the house when he’d been called on the assignment. He rather thought that his aunt and uncle merely needed to see him in the flesh, and then he would leave.
He found that he was suddenly desperate to be out of their presence so that he could process all that he’d just heard.
They left the house, Harry walking slightly faster than Theo. When they were halfway down the front pathway, a voice called out to them.
“Wait!”
Harry turned to see his cousin running towards him, a look of panic on his previously huge face.
“Wait, Harry, I just—” he said, but was then brought up short when their eyes locked.
Theo looked between them and then quickly said, “I’ll give you two a moment. Meet me back at the Apparition spot.” Theo leaned in and kissed Harry’s temple, and Harry closed his eyes momentarily before refocusing on his cousin. The loud crack of Theo’s Disapparition made Dudley shudder.
“Never could get used to that sound,” Dudley said, staring at the spot where Theo had disappeared before shaking himself and returning his gaze to Harry.
“Hi,” he said, and Harry couldn’t help but smirk.
“Hi, Dudley,” he replied.
“Uh, look,” Dudley said, glancing back at the house momentarily before refocusing on Harry. “Could we, maybe… talk sometime?”
“We’re talking now,” Harry said in the same sardonic tone he’d often used when interfacing with his cousin.
Surprisingly, Dudley did not bristle at this. “I mean, more at length. When you’re not,” he said, again looking over at the spot where Theo had just disappeared, “so busy?”
“Oh,” Harry said, being brought up rather short by this request. “I suppose so, yeah.”
Dudley had the hint of a smile on his face as he said, “Alright, great. Yeah, okay. So, um… how do I…”
“Oh!” Harry said, understanding Dudley’s meaning. “I suppose I can, uh… Owl you, if that’s alright?”
Dudley’s eyes went wide, and for a moment Harry thought he saw fear there, but then his cousin’s face lit up with a grin.
“And I can… answer you? I mean, Muggles can… reply the same way?”
Harry laughed. “Yes, absolutely. My friend Hermione has Muggle parents and she sent them owls from school often. They just wrote a response and tied it back on the owl’s leg.”
“Right, right,” Dudley said, his voice an awed whisper. “Okay then, I’ll… look for your owl?”
“Oh,” Harry said, cringing. “It won’t be Hedwig, she… uh… she didn’t make it.”
For a moment, Dudley just stared at him. Finally, he said, “I’m so sorry, Harry,” placing a comforting hand on Harry’s shoulder, and then seeming to think better of it almost instantly.
Harry reached forward, placing his own hand on his cousin's shoulder and said. “Thanks, Dudley.”
As Harry turned to leave, his mind struggled to wrap itself around the sheer magnitude of surreality he was experiencing. Reflecting back on their interactions only moments ago, Harry recalled that Dudley seemed to know who Theo was. Had he been reading the Prophet and seen their article the day previous? What else had his cousin gotten into over the last year? Harry made a mental note to ask Dudley exactly how and what he knew of Polyjuice potion the next time they spoke.
Yes, Harry thought, they would have quite a lot to discuss. What a strange state of affairs this was turning out to be.
“See you soon, Harry,” he heard Dudley say.
Harry looked over his shoulder with a small smile and said, “Yeah. Later, Big D.”