Dudley Dursley woke up on 23rd August believing that that day, like all the days before (at least since two months before his 18th birthday), would be utterly ordinary, completely unaware that he would in fact never have an ordinary day again in his life. Nonetheless, it began like most mornings. He awoke early, showered, dressed in a suit that was slightly too tight (though he'd shed the absurd weight of his childhood, his parents and aunt had been entirely right about being big boned too), and went to his usual café for coffee and a low-fat muffin.

This had been Dudley's morning routine since graduating from university, when he'd gone to work for Grunnings with his father. He hadn't deviated from it, not once in three years, even during the weekends or holidays (though those were without the suit). He found the monotony comforting, to the point where he chose his café because it was secluded and had the same regulars every morning. So it understandably gave him pause on this day when he entered the store and saw someone brand new.

She was a slender slip of a girl, with long, dirty blonde hair and bulging blue eyes. Even if she were not an oddity for her very presence, her clothing would have drawn all eyes to her anyway; the strange clash, and yet mesh, of her sky blue shirt, buttery yellow skirt and emerald green cardigan, accented with, of all things, a necklace made of corks and radish earings. It was like an avant garde artistic statement of a beautiful summer day against the dreary backdrop of a rainy British autumn. Most unusually, she sat with a typewriter and two stacks of odd brownish paper, one blank and one written on, steadily tapping out word after word. It looked old fashioned at a glance, although Dudley imagined it must have been some new thing marketed to hipsters as it didn't make the iconic tapping or dinging noises of a traditional typewriter.

He must have been staring for longer than he thought, because eventually she looked up at him. Her eyes had this dreamy sort of far off quality, as though she were only half here, but something in them pierced Dudley's soul. It was as though it didn't even take her full attention to break down every element of his appearance, analyse him, and understand the very nature of his soul. And then she smiled.

Dudley bought his coffee and muffin and fled.

The next day, Dudley returned to the shop, certain, since he had never seen the girl before, that her being there was a one time thing and he could resume his normal routine. He was wrong. When he walked in, she was there one more, at the same table with the same typewriter, dressed now in brilliant purples and oranges that really didn't go together but still managed to suit her. This time, Dudley did his best to pointedly not look at her, to just order his usual and leave. But it was so bloody hard when she dressed like a walking neon sign. As he waited for them to prepare his drink (honestly, he was in here every morning at 7 on the dot, you'd think they'd expect him by now) he found his eyes drawn to her again. This time it only took a second before she returned it. Once again, she smiled at him, and he gave a weak smile back, ignoring the sudden wobbles in his knees. This time he didn't so much run out of the shop as try very hard not to stumble.

Dudley had a very difficult time concentrating on work that day. He wasn't sure why, but his mind kept drifting back to that strange blonde. She wasn't his type, not at all. He was no stranger to women, having had several relationships, one of which was actually fairly serious until he'd bollocks'd it up, all throughout university, but they tended to be on the bustier, huskier side, usually brunette. But something about this girl intrigued him. Everything from her clothes to her typewriter were an affront to normalcy, a giant rude hand sign displayed to all things Dursley, and yet it fascinated him. Dudley was thick about a lot of things, but life and soul sucking monsters had made him very aware of himself. This girl was attractive to him. Clearly there was only one thing to do.

Well, a month of ignoring her didn't fix anything. Dudley sometimes wondered if he might need to find a new place for his morning coffee, but every time he made a crappy excuse, chastised himself because he knew it wasn't the real reason, and kept going anyway. So there was a second thing to do.

"Hullo," Dudley said, nervously.

"Good morning," the girl replied, not a care in the world. Her voice had a dreamy, airy quality, with a soft lilt. It was quite pretty.

"I've, er, seen you in here a lot lately," Dudley stammered, uncertain.

"Yes, I find it's a peaceful place to work," she answered, eyes returning to her typewriter and hands going back to work, though she didn't break the conversation. "My home's become infested with a nest of Hormwakkies and I can't concentrate with their constant whistling, so I've started coming here."

"Oh." Dudley didn't have the first clue what a Hormwakkie was, but he didn't know what a lot of things were. "What is it you're working on?"

"I'm actually just finishing," the girl said, tapping out a few more keystrokes before tearing out the last page and handing it to Dudley. It read The Mating Patterns of the Western Goatfly, by Luna Lovegood. Dudley stared at it with some confusion. "… I'm Luna Lovegood," the girl supplied, sounding for all the world like she thought herself helpful.

"Dudley Dursley," Dudley responded automatically, still trying to parse out the page. Luna Lovegood beamed.

"Oh, how funny. Our names both alliterate."

"Er, yeah." He handed Luna back the page, which she set on top of the stack. "Say, why'd you do the title page last?"

"So I could put it on top," Luna replied as though that were obvious.

"But don't you have to reorder them anyway?"

"No, they're already in order." Dudley stared at her, and then at the stack of papers, which she'd clearly been laying face up.

"… you mean to tell me that you wrote this paper of yours… backwards."

"Yes, it seemed much simpler than trying to reorganize them after its already done." Dudley stared at her even more.

"… why not just lay the pages facedown?"

"That's a brilliant idea," Luna answered, not missing a beat. "I suppose I'll have to do that next time." Dudley felt the sudden odd urge to smash his face into a wall. Clearly this girl was loony, and associating with her had been a terrible idea. "Would you like to sit down?"

"Sure, I s'pose."

It was Sunday, so Dudley had nowhere to be. Normally on such a day he would have gone to the gym, stopped by his parents' house for lunch, then gone home and played video games for the rest of the night. Instead, he sat with Luna Lovegood and talked for hours. He learned that her paper was actually her thesis for her Masters (she called it her Mastery, which Dudley found strange, but he didn't know enough about post-graduate work to correct her) in Cryptozoology, or the study of mythical creatures. She was a bit of an odd duck, professing a personal belief that the various creatures she studied actually existed, although she acknowledged that she had no proof. Dudley himself was skeptical, but if there was a university program dedicated to the field who was he to argue, and besides which he would've said that wizards and giants weren't real when he was 11 and then he grew a pig's tail. For his part, Luna learned of his dull work life and his time at Smeltings and uni as a boxing champion. When the time came to talk about family, Dudley skirted, as he often did, the topic of siblings and cousins, instead telling her about his parents and Aunt Marge, and in turn learned of Luna's father, who ran a newspaper in Devon, and the friends she considered family. In fact, she informed him, she was set to become an aunt, a godmother and a namesake all at once in about four months.

"They're going to call her Lily Luna," she said quite proudly. "For Harry's mum and me."

"That's a pretty name," Dudley commented. The name Lily actually sounded vaguely familiar to him, but he couldn't quite place why. He also suppressed the small surge of hope at the name Harry. He'd long since realized, in the past 8 years, that Harry was an incredibly common name.

By mid-afternoon, Dudley was certain he knew more about Luna than he did his friends from work, and she was just regaling him with tales of the football matches she'd commentated in her secondary school years and the cruel PE teacher when his mobile rang. It was his mother, and he sighed. In losing track of the time he'd forgotten to text her that he wouldn't be coming for lunch today, and now she was probably panicking.

"Sorry, Luna, that's my mum. Gotta let her know I'm not dead in a ditch somewhere." Luna smiled politely.

"I understand. Daddy often gets worried when I'm on expeditions and don't write. I should probably be going anyway, if they're left unchecked too long the Hormwakkies will likely eat my roof.

"Er, right." Dudley stood, when it occurred to him that now that she was done with her thesis she probably wouldn't be coming around anymore. She was an odd duck, but Dudley actually found her company really enjoyable. "Say, Luna, could I get your phone number? I'd like to do this again sometime."

"Hm?" Luna cocked her head slightly, before a look of recognition appeared on her face. "Oh, yes. Certainly." She wrote out the number on a napkin, slowly as if trying to remember it as she went. "I'm glad Hermione talked me into getting one." Dudley grunted in agreement. He hadn't been planning on getting a mobile originally, given how expensive they were, but after the company issued them to all the administrative staff he never went anywhere without it. He pocketed the napkin and smiled.

"I'll call you later."

"I look forward to it." Luna's frankness was steadily surprising him less and less, but still, that sounded almost like genuine flirting. They looked at each other, just for a moment, before Dudley headed out of the store, putting his phone to his ear.

"Hullo? Yes, Mum, I'm sorry I didn't call, I was talking with a new friend… yes she's a girl Mum… I don't know if she wants kids, I just met her…"

Dudley took Luna out to Italian for their first date. Simple, classic, elegant. It was a nice place too, the kind where you had to dress up a bit. And she was so very clearly bored.

"You're not having a very good time, are you?" Dudley asked dejectedly, turning the pasta on his fork. Luna started, having been staring off into space as he noticed she often did.

"Oh, no, Dudley, I'm having a lovely time," she assured him, smiling apologetically. "It's just that a dinner date is so very cliche, isn't it? I don't normally do the usual thing, and I was quite looking forward to spending an evening out in the Mu- the non-academic world."

"Oh." If Dudley would normally have caught Luna's slip of the tongue, he was too distracted by a sudden racking of the brain. "I'm sorry, I guess I'm very used to doing the usual thing. So what do you want to do?"

And that was how Dudley took Luna bowling in a nice suit and dress, and earned a kiss on the cheek at the end of the night.

I need a break from the rigors of the world and from the long and arduous process of rewriting Harry Granger, so I thought to myself hey, let's write a short, fluffy fic that pairs my two favorite characters and also will give Vernon a stroke. This shouldn't be more than 4 or 5 chapters, and short chapters at that, so I'll probably even finish it!