Dudley spent the next week watching. Harry seemed content to drift from house to house, catching up with friends from primary and playing video games and eating far too much junk food and generally acting like an idiot. Like a normal child. Nobody seemed overly concerned about what might be going on over at the Dursley house – they'd hid things well enough for years now, and Harry didn't quite seem to understand what was going on enough to be worried about it. Dudley was still around, and there was still enough food to eat, and Harry's life generally went better the less time he spent around Vernon – as far as Harry was concerned, life was about as good as it ever was in their house.

Dudley folded the bills into the bottom of his trainer and counted the days until the money appeared again. It was within a week, and no one said anything about it any having gone missing or the food that had suddenly appeared in the house after Dudley used it to buy something to feed Harry that wasn't tinned tomatoes or stale biscuits. He took more the next time, nearly half, and waited again – and on and on, week after week, waiting for someone to notice.

In those first few weeks, Dudley spent most of his time walking Harry to friend's houses or the park or dragging him along to help carry groceries – "C'mon, we're old enough now, don't you want to get out of the house?" – and then carefully making sure they were home and in their rooms before six every night, which was the earliest his father ever came home. They spent the nights playing card games and reading and working on their school work.

Harry initially resented the confinement but relished having Dudley's attention all for himself – he spent hours tucked up against Dudley's side, pestering him for help on his essays and forcing him to build pillow forts and dragging him to lay in the space underneath the bed and read comics by flashlight. They played endless games of hangman and knots and crosses and chopsticks, never with any clear winner because they counted on there being a next time to win back the lead.

On the second Saturday Dudley went out and affected the wide-eyed look he'd mastered early on, one that had successfully shammed his teachers and other adults even when he'd been fat and horrible, and worked even better now that he was quiet and unfailingly polite and edging in on too-thin. (He'd had to cut a new notch in his belt. He'd never been thin before, not really, but he and Harry wore the same size and he'd been feeling sick since March and been able to count his ribs in the mirror since April and now he'd had to cut a new notch in his belt).

But he apparently sold the look well enough, because the neighbors pinched his cheeks and let him mow their lawns and weed their gardens and walk their dogs in return for pocket money and biscuits that he stuffed into his pockets when they looked away. They easily bought his stories about wanting to save money for a bike, a dog, a computer game, for the future because his father believed in teaching them the value of a dollar – that last always got him the laughing, indulgent look adults always seemed to give precocious children, repeating things their parents had told them, and sometimes a few extra quid – but they didn't seem worried, didn't ask any questions, and for Dudley that was enough.

Dudley spent one evening running some calculations – between skimming a bit off the top of the grocery tin each week and his odd jobs around the neighborhood, Dudley might manage to scrape together some money – not enough, not nearly enough, but maybe enough for their books if they bought them used and shared them (a trick he'd picked up in Uni), and maybe he could let the hems out on Harry's trousers instead of buying new ones, and maybe he'd been eating too much, he'd gone longer before on nothing at all, back when he used to box, and his stomach always seemed to ache now anyways.

He could make it work.

In July Dudley found work at a diner about two miles outside Little Whinging, in Egham.

He'd gone into town for the charity bins – people had more to throw out, and the church there had a larger, more generous congregation than the tiny chapel in Little Whinging that barely saw use outside of Easter and Christmas, and there was a school not far that had black trousers as part of the uniform. More than that, though, it was someplace to go, a way to occupy the hours between his father getting home at night and him leaving again in the morning. Harry seemed content, after those first few weeks, to be left alone in his room in the evening, but Dudley found himself lying awake for hours, staring at the ceiling and begging for something to occupy his time – anything to distract from his worries about money and the inside of his own mind staring back at him, the memory of Quirrell's blood splashing hot across the backs of his fingers and the sound the man had made, wet and gurgling after that first initial crunch of the cartilage in his throat giving way –

It didn't take long for Dudley to figure out how to climb down the delicate trellis installed beneath his window.

He followed the trail of bus stops like bread crumbs, looping back a few times when they'd made a sudden turn or he'd gotten lost in a neighborhood. Within a week he could make the trip in less than forty minutes in the dark, if he cut across the meadows the lined Egham on the north side.

It only took a few more days after that to catch the eye of the cook at the all-night diner that he passed on his way to the clothing bins by the grocery store (where he'd yet to find a pair of pants that was within two sizes of Harry, but plenty of gently worn jeans and a pair of runners that would probably do for at least a year). He'd started dropping in to use the restroom and to drink out of the sink to help bear the muggy heat on his walk back to Little Whinging and to abate the ache in his gut that never seemed to go away lately.

One night the man gripped his shoulder and dragged him into the kitchen, shoved him at the pile of dishes and told him to occupy himself, and that was that.

He endured a lot of cooing and cheek-pinching from the older girls who work there, but the owner looked the other way and in between the leftovers he started bringing home for Harry and the cut of the tip money he'd been getting for washing the dishes, Dudley thought he might be making out better than some of the waitresses.

Dudley wasn't quite sure what they thought of him – the older workers seemed ambivalent, the teenage girls fawning, the boys reluctantly tolerant. He'd heard a few whispers, like 'gutter rat' and 'trouble,' that after enough days of him showing up generally washed and on time began to fade more towards sympathetic wonderings of abuse and and neglect.

When they asked, he told them his name was Dean and that he was thirteen and that he lived in a block of flats a few streets north of the diner and there weren't very many questions beyond that.

Dudley kept the money tied in a sock in the backpack he'd started carrying everywhere, not quite trusting anything he left at home to still be there when he got back. He spent an hour every night counting it out, running numbers, estimating how much they'd need. He thought back to the bundle of notes his mother had passed off to McGonagall last year, and realized his mother must have anticipated it, had had the money ready.

He thought about how much the wands and cauldrons and trunks had cost, how large the pile of coins McGonagall had received from the strange creatures had been, how much had been left over at the end. He wondered if they'd been fivers – if his mother had scraped and scrounged in secret, like he was doing – or if she'd gone to the bank and picked up a roll of crisp twenty pound notes. He couldn't remember.

How many books would they need? Some were for more than one year, he knew, but how many? Would they need any special equipment now that they were older?

In the mornings Dudley watched Harry slip on his holey socks, inspected the grungies in the wash he'd started doing in the basement sink in order to keep quiet, and mentally added new underclothes to the list. He watched the food dwindle, wondered if his mother was eating at all – she barely left her room, and Dudley did his best to keep Harry and himself out of the house during the day and locked in their rooms after six.

Harry didn't seem to notice him going in the night. He seemed a little worried, in that vague, uncertain way children were when they knew something was wrong but they weren't really sure what, if anything, they were supposed to to about it. But he stayed out of Vernon's way and ate the alternately soggy and burnt meals Dudley prepared them without complaint and happily gorged on the biscuits and puddings that Dudley was bringing home more reliably than money. He grew another inch and Dudley was proud and worried in turns – happy to see him grow, maybe even taller than he'd been last time, but watching the scant inch of bare ankle that had been showing beneath his robes at the end of last year growing in his mind's eye.

Dudley began taking all of the money that showed up in the grocery tin. He wondered if it was his mother or his father replacing it, if they would notice, if it was just another thing to pile on top of the mountain of problems he was waiting to come back and bite him.

It stopped appearing a week into July, and he stops wondering at all.

In the second week of July, Dudley left the diner and to head back to Little Whinging sometime after midnight, only to get pulled down an alley by a strange little creature with bulbous eyes and features like melting wax.

"Young Master Potter cannot be reached by owl, dirty half-blood," it told him, all in one breath, and pressed a note to his palm. "From Master Sirius, sir, kindly pass it along you filthy little mudblood," the creature continues. Dudley stared.

"Take it!" the creature howled. Dudley's fingers gripped the letter reflexively.

"I– thank you?" he says, uncertain. The creature's scowl deepens, briefly, before it disappears with a loud crack.

Dudley looked down at the letter. Harry Potter, was all it said, but the handwriting was a trained, elegant hand, and the parchment was thick and the fold crisp. He stowed it away carefully in the inner pocket of his bag, and spent the walk home wondering. Did the protection on the house prevent Harry from getting mail? He remembered, vaguely, that Harry didn't always get letters. He'd made fun of him for it at some point, he was sure.

But there'd also been summers full of owls, when there was always at least one waiting on the sills or in the garden. Maybe it was only sometimes. Maybe the protections – wards, that was what Flitwick had called those sorts of charms – could be adjusted. Maybe Harry wasn't supposed to get mail from strangers, but friends could be keyed in somehow.

Dudley waited until the morning to pass along the letter to Harry – pretended he'd found it in the garden that morning, before Harry had woken up – and forced himself to eat a fried egg while he waited for Harry to finish reading it.

The eggs had gone cold, not that that seemed to stop Harry, but Dudley struggled to swallow it, dripping with grease and the whites still a little runny, even though it was hard and burnt around the edges. It felt unbearably slimy in his mouth and stuck in his throat briefly when he tried to swallow.

"So what does it say? Dudley asked when Harry finally lowered the letter.

"Sirius wants to host a birthday party for me," Harry replied, looking pleased but conflicted. There were no birthday parties in the Dursley household. Petunia had attempted to organize some parties for Dudley and not for Harry when they were younger, but Dudley had put the kibosh on that quickly enough. No amount of whinging and wheedling would ever convince the Dursleys to throw a party for Harry, and Dudley wouldn't have one without him. Dudley was certain that Harry wasn't quite sure of what even went on at birthday celebrations.

"That's nice," Dudley told him. "Do you want to? You could see Ron and Hermione, and some of the others, if you like," Dudley encouraged. Harry shrugged.

"What's wrong with that?" Dudley asked, poking the last egg onto Harry's plate, where it was quickly speared on a fork and eaten.

"He wants me to stay for a while afterwards." Harry said to his plate as he mopped up the last of the yolk with his toast. "Two weeks," he added around a mouthful.

"You should go," Dudley said, swallowing hard. "It would be nice, wouldn't it?"

This was Sirius's role now – Dudley would keep Harry alive, Sirius could keep him happy. He could throw parties and buy presents and give Harry a place to spend Holidays where he could be well fed and spoiled and loved, as long as it didn't become home. This house would be home, Dudley would be home. "Your friends could visit whenever you wanted, you could go to Diagon Alley, I bet he'd take you," Dudley continued. "You might even get to fly." He was sure that wizard homes had some sort of protection from muggle eyes – Malfoy had certainly boasted about flying at home enough.

It would be good for him, Dudley told himself firmly. Harry's face had lightened as Dudley spoke. It was right. Harry should be with his own people.

"You could come too, you know," Harry was saying brightly. "I'm sure he'd say yes!"

It was Dudley's turn to frown down at his plate. The sulfurous smell wafting up at him turned his stomach and had him regretting the egg he'd eaten. He thought of the man he'd seen, the man he'd yelled at, of Harry at fifteen, sharp and angry and crying out for Sirius in his sleep, of the sock full of pocket change that could hardly be enough and the look in Quirrell's eyes as he'd died, because they'd know, somehow, those people would see right to the heart of him in ten seconds and then he'd be taken away and Harry would have to stay here, alone with Vernon because Petunia was as good as dead already, never moving from her bed–

"No," Dudley managed. "I think it would be good for you to spend some time with him, alone. Get to know each other. He could tell you about your parents, he might have some good stories."

Harry's face went hungry in the way it always did when he thought of his parents (because Dudley wasn't enough, could never be enough).

"Go write a reply," Dudley told him. "Give Hedwig a chance to stretch her wings."

Harry was up and out of the kitchen before Dudley finished.

Dudley gathered up the dishes, filled the sink with hot water, and waited until he could no longer hear Harry on the stairs to go into the downstairs bathroom and be quietly, violently sick.

The egg must have been bad, Dudley told himself. Just the one.

The next night Dudley was again assaulted by the little creature, Sirius's reply in hand. Harry was ecstatic to receive it, and Dudley spent a few hours helping him organize his belongings, packing his trunk up with all his supplies in case he ended up staying the whole of August. He'd done it before, Dudley knew, disappearing off into the night with barely a word goodbye, not to be seen until the next summer. Harry drew himself a little calendar to hang on the wall, checking off the days until Sirius would come and pick them up for the party, wondering what sorts of presents he'd get, if Ron and Hermione could come, if that man – Remus – that he'd met at Christmas would be there.

Dudley stayed with him that night until he heard Vernon come in, making sure Harry stayed quiet until Vernon had lumbered off to bed, his snores reverberating through the walls. They were louder now, Dudley was certain, even though Vernon had lost weight in the past few months.

The diner was fairly busy that night, and Dudley ended up volunteering to drag the rubbish down to the dumpster they shared with a chinese restaurant down the street just so he could hear himself think.

There was a teenager, tall and gangly and spotty, smoking beside the dumpster. "Can't dump that here, restaurant use only," he told Dudley in a bored tone.

"It's from the diner," Dudley replied. It took some work to heave it over the side, but he managed it. His limbs felt shaky from the effort of hauling it down the street, but then again they always did lately.

"Titchy, aren't you?" The other boy said. Dudley scowled at him, but still had to spend a moment panting as he leaned against the brickwork. "Don't you have somewhere to be?" he said when he finally caught his breath.

"On my break," the boy replied, snagging another cigarette out of the pocket of his greasy apron and starting to chainsmoke. "'sides, we close at midnight, not like you nutters."

Dudley inhaled deeply, eyeing the carton with envy. He'd smoked for a year or so in Uni, before his coach had found out and taken it out of his hide, but he remembered the itch. The relief that came from scratching it. Why are you hitting yourself with a hammer? Because it feels so good when I stop!

"Give me a fag?" Dudley asked tentatively. He'd smoked once or twice at this age, before, cigs bummed off older students, who gave them away just to have the privilege of introducing the firsties to their first smoke.

The older boy took a long draw and blew the smoke in Dudley's face.

"Give me a blowie and maybe I'll think about it," he said, voice smug.

Dudley scowled, but something about the boy's face gave him a funny feeling. The older boy was joking, but there was something too eager and a little wistful around the edges – he knew he could say it because Dudley'd never say yes, because it would just be taken as him telling some kid to bugger off, but he'd meant it.

"Gross," Dudley said as an experiment, watching the nearly invisible disappointment flash across the boy's face. He remembered being a teenager – fourteen and too fat by half for anyone to touch him, but laying awake listening to the other boys jack each other off in the dorms, just to feel another person's touch. By the time he'd slimmed down, the rest of his yearmates had grown out of each other and into girls, but third and fourth year it hadn't been strange. It was normal at this age – expected, even.

Dudley glanced at the boy again – about nineteen by the looks of it, too greasy and spotty for girls to want him, but the look in his eyes said he didn't want them, either. Too old and too young for Dudley, all at the same time, but what did that matter to him? He'd done worse things, he'd killed before, and if he could get something out of it–

"Throw in ten quid and the rest of that pack and maybe I'll give you a handy," Dudley said. He watched the surprise that flickered across the boy's face, the eagerness, and shuddered off the slimy feeling that was creeping over him.

"Deal," the boy said after a moment of shocked silence, lighting another fag and passing it over. Dudley took a long draw, careful not to choke, and relished the burn in his throat. "What's your name?" The older boy said, watching Dudley closely, something approaching wonder on his face.

"Dean," Dudley lied smoothly.

"Gary," the boy replied, fascinated. He watched with sharp eyes as Dudley sucked down the cigarette, holding the smoke in his lungs until the urge to cough had subsided. He finished it quickly and stamped out the snub on the pavement.

"When are you off, then?" Dudley asked Gary, his heart pounding. He felt cagey and panicky and for some reason he was relishing it.

"Half an hour," Gary told him.

"See you back here then," Dudley replied. He usually left around now anyways.

"See you then," Gary agreed. Dudley wasn't sure what that tone in his voice was, but he thought it might have been something like awe.

Dudley couldn't remember how he got home. He remembered everything before – heading back to the diner, finishing the dishes, collecting the handfuls of small change left at the bottom of the tip jar that nobody else ever wanted to bother with (fifty pence and smaller were his to take). He remembered grabbing his bag from the corner next to the stove where he always left it, making sure the sockful of money was stowed properly in the pocket hidden on the underside of the bag.

He remembered heading back to the alley, finding Gary waiting for him, letting him lead Dudley further away from their respective workplaces – "For privacy," Gary had said with a strange smile on his face – and everything that came after. Not wholly different from any other sexual encounter that he'd had, before, but it still felt –

Dudley shut off that thought, slinging his bag into the room ahead of him before hoisting himself off the trellis and over the window sill. Everything was moving in patches, little chunks of time missing: he was there, with Gary, the older boy gripping him by the hair and then . . .

And after, he was ducking across the street to avoid the middle aged couple tottering down the way, flush with wine after a party with friends, and then he was in his own back garden, and now, here, in his room.

He stripped out of his clothes, kicking them under the bed before retrieving the pyjamas that had sat mostly unused since the beginning of summer, most days ending with him passing out on the bed, still fully clothed. He couldn't take a shower, not without risking waking everyone else up, which would just bring problems and questions and more. Instead he scrubbed himself with a flannel he wet at the sink before pulling on the nightclothes and crawling into bed.

Everything was fine. Nothing that hadn't happened before – Dudley even had ten quid and half a box of cigarettes to show for his trouble. Gary had said he'd want to meet again, that he'd give Dudley more money. That maybe he had a friend that would be willing to help Dudley out as well.

It was fine.