Play Hard

A Harry Potter fanthing

By

EvilFuzzy9

Rating: K+

Genre: Friendship/Family

Characters/Pairings: Harry, Dudley, Ron, Hermione; [implied RHr and HG]

Summary: Ron and Harry get a new addition to their flat, and Dudley Dursley reconnects with his cousin through the power of an old SNES. [oneshot]

"So, is this one of those... er, vedoo games of yours?"

"Video," the blond corrected, not bothering to look over his shoulder as he crouched down and fiddled with a mess of wires. "Like in video player, or videotape."

"I think it might have a Latin root, actually," the brunette interjected giving the redhead a meaningful look. "Many more technical and... ah, scientific words do."

"Well, I dunno about Latin," said the blond, hooking up three cords tipped with red, yellow, and white adaptors to the corresponding ports on the television. "But I can't believe you lot have never heard of half this stuff. What do you do for fun when you can't go outside or call one of your mates?"

The gangly redhead gave a shrug.

"She reads," he said, pointing a finger at his female friend as though accusing her of something heinous (and the blond seemed to share this sentiment, judging by how he goggled at her). "I play chess, if I can find someone to go up against. That, or listen to see if there's anything good on the wireless."

"Reading is a perfectly respectable way to spend one's time, Ron," the brunette said, crossing her arms over her chest and huffing.

The thickset blond gave her an almost pitying look at this statement, and he shared a nod with the redhead – Ron.

"Poor girl," the blond opined. "I mean, really... 'Respectable'? Doesn't she know the first thing about how to have fun?"

"Hermione's always been a bit deficient in that regard," Ron said with a grim sort of nod. "But me and Harry have given a good chunk of our youths to the cause of getting her to realize how to put down her books and do something stupid and pointless."

Another young man walked into the den as Ron said this, carrying an armful of soda and crisps. He was lean and bespectacled with unruly jet black hair.

"Yeah, we're great at doing stupid and reckless," he said with a lopsided grin. "Gryffindors and all that, you know? Pointless and trivial are a bit harder, though. We always seem to wind up in the thick of things."

He set down his load and shared a conspiratorial grin with Ron and Hermione, who reciprocated to differing degrees. The latter pursed her lips and disapprovingly eyed the junk food Harry'd just placed on the coffee table, while the former chuckled and scurried forward to see what sort of haul their mate had brought in.

The heavyset blond chose that moment to stand up and take a step back from the fruits of his labor, a gray boxy thing of plastic sitting on the floor before the television, dark cords protruding from its back. He turned and grinned a touch smugly at the other three.

"Told you I could figure it out without the manual," he said proudly, puffing out his chest. "Now we've just got to plug in the controllers and get the telly on the right channel, and then we're golden!"

The dark haired young man smiled a hint cautiously at the much larger fellow, glancing at the label on the front of the box.

"Thanks for this, Dudley," he said. "Going through all the trouble, I mean."

Dudley laughed and waved a dismissive hand.

"'S'no problem, Harry. This old thing was just gathering dust in the attic, anyways; I figure it might as well go to some people who might actually want to use it."

Harry nodded thoughtfully at his cousin, momentarily glancing around his and Ron's shared flat. They had moved in together a short while after starting in the auror program, renting a modestly sized apartment within reasonable walking distance of their workplace. Ron rather enjoyed the novelty of living in muggle London, showing a hint of his father's influence with how he marveled at the simplest of things. He'd grown quite attached to the telly, in particular – much to his bookworm girlfriend's disapproval.

"You still went through the trouble of bringing it over and hooking it up for us," Harry said, smiling a bit more warmly now. "I know you're still not that comfortable around my sort, so this means a lot to me. Hopefully the Nintendo won't blow up on us, or anything."

Dudley frowned for a moment, before fidgeting anxiously and peeking over his shoulder at the SUPER NINTENDO label on the plastic box.

"Don't mention it," he said quietly. "Your friends are... well, they're a better sort than most of my old mates." He paused, and a bit of color leaked out of his face. "And, er — the Nintendo wouldn't, um, actually blow up, would it?"

Harry shrugged.

"It shouldn't," he said. "Ron's been working on a few special charms with his dad and brother (George, to be specific; you know, the one who owns the joke shop) and Hermione, too. Electronics normally don't work too well around magic, see—"

Dudley did not visibly react to the word, apart from maybe the slightest twitch of a finger, and Harry thought this was rather impressive considering his cousin's upbringing.

"—but they've made some good progress on fixing that. I don't really understand the specifics, but Hermione compared it to, er... hardening devices against electromagnetic interference? This stuff is way over my head, and I reckon Ron doesn't understand it any better than I do, but he's got his dad's enthusiasm and his mum's stubbornness. And George reckons that 'magic-proofing' muggle electronics might turn out to be a lucrative field."

Dudley scratched the back of his head, letting out a weary laugh.

"Whatever you say, Harry. I couldn't imagine life without the telly or my computer, but I guess you guys have managed somehow." He looked over to Ron and Hermione, who appeared to be goodnaturedly bickering over the junk food Harry had brought out.

"You shouldn't eat so unhealthily, Ron," Hermione said in that faintly superior tone of hers. "You're an auror now, and you should take better care of your body. It's bad enough you've been rotting your brain with that television."

"We don't eat stuff like this everyday, Hermione," Ron replied, brushing off her concerns. "Mum would go ballistic if we weren't feeding ourselves right. But this is a special occasion, isn't it? It's not every day we have a muggle over, and Dudley reckons junk food and vedoo games go hand in hand."

Dudley grinned sheepishly when Hermione looked his way and wrinkled her nose, eyeing him rather like his mother would eye someone particularly disheveled or uncouth. He offered a nervous wave of his hand, and she sniffed and went back to fussing over her boyfriend's bad habits.

"They always like that?" Dudley asked Harry, bemused.

"No, not really," Harry answered. "Usually they're worse."

Dudley was grinning as he popped the cartridge in and flicked the machine on. The screen of the television went black for a moment, before the Nintendo logo came up.

Hermione looked disinterested as she turned another page in her book, a jingle reaching their ears as the pre-game credits rolled. A simple introductory cinematic played, colorful characters interacting on the screen.

Ron watched in fascination, and Harry felt a twinge of something like nostalgia.

Dimly, he recalled a nearly forgotten instance of playing a two-person game with Dudley when they were very young – probably before he'd ever actually shown any signs of magic, back when Vernon and Petunia might have dared to hope that he would turn out "normal". He couldn't recall the circumstances or specifics of this half-remembered time, but with a controller in his hand and his cousin sitting beside him, the Boy-Who-Lived couldn't help but feel like he had been here before.

Dudley shuffled on the couch next to Harry, holding the second person controller in his meaty hands. He glanced sidelong at Ron, who was staring raptly at the screen.

"You sure you don't wanna play?" he asked.

Ron shook his head, now looking at Dudley.

"Nah, you can go first and show me what to do. I've never really seen a... videogame before." He swelled a little bit, looked proud of himself for pronouncing the word correctly.

Dudley shrugged, bemused, and turned back to the screen. The game – Super Mario World, or something to that effect – had now come to the main menu. Harry selected the 2 PLAYER option, taking a moment to try and remember how the controller worked, before the game began in earnest.

Ron watched to much amusement as Harry fumbled around on the world map, mildly astounded by the fact that his best mate was actually controlling the fat little cartoon man on the telly. Harry started a level – they didn't quite catch the name of it – and promptly failed to jump out of the way of a purple dragon-looking little enemy.

Ron laughed when he saw the cartoon man 'die', and Dudley indulged himself in a chuckle as well. Harry didn't seem overtly dismayed, though he was probably a bit irked at dying so quickly.

Now it was Dudley's turn, and he was Luigi. Ron commented that this character must be Mario's mortal enemy, eliciting a chuckle from Harry and something like a quirked lip from Hermione. Dudley didn't quite get the joke, and Harry's vague, perfunctory explanation of their former school's houses (green and red apparently being the primary colors of rival houses Slytherin and Gryffindor, respectively) only left him feeling more bemused.

After a minute or so, he shrugged it off as just "one of those wizard things" and turned his attention back to the game. He started the level Harry'd just died on, and made it the whole way through without too much difficulty. Dudley had preferred more violent games in his youth, and hadn't played much 'kiddie' or platforming stuff in years, but he was still a damn sight better at videogames than his practically luddite cousin.

Hermione had her nose buried in her leatherbound, encyclopedia-sized tome as Dudley started on the next level – the book's title was written in some language the blond had never seen before – and she seemed wholly disinterested in the events unfolding onscreen. She only peered over her book once or twice to eye the screen with something akin to weary distaste, promptly returning to her reading each time.

Ron was the polar opposite of his girlfriend, taking a great deal of interest in the game, having never really seen anything like it before. Apparently wizards, for all their magic and moving photographs, weren't terribly creative when it came to entertainment. Or that was the impression Dudley got, at any rate, from the way the redhead alternately cheered and jeered as he and Harry made their way through the levels. He was very talkative when he got excited.

"Why are those severed heads casting engorgio on your character?"

"Whoa! You just killed all those guys with their buddy's shell!"

"Gah! Flying nifflers out of nowhere!"

"Do you reckon those flowers are supposed to be fire lilies, Harry?"

Granted, Dudley only understood about half of what Ron said, but the guy's enthusiasm was catching. It had been quite some time since he'd had this much fun just playing a videogame; it reminded him somewhat of his youth, back when he and his friends could still be amazed by relatively simple things.

(It was a bit morbid how the redhead kept insisting that the power up mushrooms were severed heads, but it didn't particularly faze Dudley)

Harry got a hang of the controls pretty quickly, too, after the first couple of levels, and soon the two cousins were competing against each other, trying to see who could get the farthest without dying.

Hermione joined in on the laughter once or twice when Ron made a particularly amusing comment, and Harry grinned smugly whenever he managed to get one up over on his cousin. Dudley, in turn, never failed to give Harry a good ribbing when he made a dumb mistake or slipped up on a relatively easy section, and had plenty of fun showing Harry up wherever he could.

It was good, clean fun all around, the four of them having fun playing (or watching others play) a colorful, innocent videogame.

For Ron, Harry, and Hermione it was a way to forget about the war, and the battles that sometimes still seemed so fresh in their minds. For Dudley, it was a way to reconnect with his cousin and make up for seventeen years wasted alternately on absence and enmity.

Maybe he couldn't be a part of their world, but he could at least make them feel welcome in his.

A/N: I dunno, I just wanted to write something with Dudley and the Trio bonding in some way. This wasn't an especially deep or meaningful fic, I reckon, but hopefully it was at least a little cute. Or something, I dunno.

Also, I really like the idea of Ron and George finding ways to let magic and electronics coexist – heaven knows how many prospective muggleborn students must be dismayed otherwise to learn that their walkmans and their gameboys won't work at Hogwarts. It's probably entirely possible, since, y'know, electricity is kinda responsible for keeping folks' hearts beating and shit, so clearly magic doesn't just flatly cancel out the transfer of electrons. Personally, I see it mostly as just a matter of magically insulating the more delicate workings – similar to waterproofing, or hardening devices against electromagnetic interference.

Both of which are entirely possible, albeit certainly not foolproof.

Updated: 3-4-15

TTFN and R&R!

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