Harry spent the rest of the afternoon through dinnertime in his cupboard, without a single meal. He sat sitting in the cupboard and breathing in its stale, heavy, stagnant air, reading and rereading the instructions on the first page of the notebook. The death note.

'The human whose name is written in this note shall die. This note will not take effect unless the writer has the person's face in their mind when writing his or her name. Therefore, people sharing the same name will not be effected. If the cause of death is written within 40 seconds of writing the person's name, it will happen. If the cause of death is not specified, the person will simply die of a heart attack. After writing the cause of death, details of the death should be written in the next 6 minutes and 40 seconds.'

'This has to be some elaborate prank. A notebook can't kill someone. Its not magical.'

Then, it hit him. 'Maybe it is magical! Like me! Like how I'm a magician.'

He grinned, elated, happier than he'd ever felt. He hurriedly grabbed around for a pen, in a rush of excitement. 'Who should I write down?'

The instructions echoed in his mind. 'The human whose name is written in this note shall die.'

A heavy weight settled in his stomach. "If it really is a magical book and if it really does work…then I'm killing someone. I'd be even worse than the Dursleys.'

He paused for a long moment, twirling the pen around in his hand anxiously. 'Then I just gotta write down someone really bad that deserves to die! Someone whose existence only serves to hurt people, not help them.'

Uncle Vernon came to mind, and he felt queasy even considering the possibility. 'But its true. Aunt Petunia always gets mad at him cause he micromanages her spending, he never helps out around the house, and encourages Dudley's bad behavior. Says Dudley wouldn't be so out of control if Uncle Vernon would be his dad and not his friend. He's always got an insult for everybody. He gives Dudley more presents than he can play with but he's never given me anything at all. I don't even get a bedroom but Dudley's got both a bedroom and a playroom.'

However upon further consideration, that didn't seem like a good idea. Uncle Vernon made damn sure he knew who made the money in the house and whose money his existence was wasting. 'If Uncle Vernon doesn't work then Aunt Petunia can't buy groceries. So I can't test it with him.'

A moment, then a horrible, amazing idea came to him. 'Dudley! I can test it with Dudley! I'll know pretty quickly if it works, and I won't have to put up with him anymore! I can have friends at school, even!' He grinned and squinted in the dim light of the cupboard's single lightbulb, and wrote down 'Dudley Dursley' in the note in his best handwriting, making sure to keep his grotesque face in his mind as he carefully wrote each letter in his best handwriting.

He didn't have a watch to keep track of the time, so waiting for anything, whatever sign it worked, felt like it took forever. 'Did it work? Or was it all some stupid prank? I wish I had a watch.

Guestimating, he started to count back to himself. Thirty, twenty-nine, twenty-eight, twenty-seven…

Then, a sudden, panicked, strangled scream from upstairs. Dudley.

Aunt Petunia heard him and poked her head out from the kitchen. "Dudley, dear, are you okay?"

She waited for a moment. "Dudley?"

When no one replied, and there was not a sound from the upstairs save for some video game's barely audible music, she got concerned and impatient. "Dudley!"

Harry opened the grate on his cupboard to watch as she marched down the hall and up the stairs to her son's room. "Dudley!" Petunia screamed, a horrifying, bone-chilling sound. He'd never heard her sound like that in all his life.

"What hurts, darling? Don't worry, mummy will get you to hospital." She was crying, he could hear it in her voice.

"Harry!" she screamed, and it chilled him to the bone. "Harry, call for the ambulance! Dudley's unconscious."

He nodded numbly, dumbly. "I will!" He yelled loud as he could, before walking to the phone on the wall and dialing the number. "Hello? Yes, my name's Harry Potter. I'm at Number 4 Privet Drive, sir."

It all felt so cold, so numb, so surreal.

"Its my cousin, sir. He's hurt upstairs, he screamed and then he was out cold."

He wrote down a name, and now his cousin really was upstairs dying, and he didn't know how to feel about that.

"No, sir, I didn't see it I was downstairs. My aunt said to call for an ambulance, can you send one? And hurry?"

He could hardly believe it really happened, even as the officer on the other end asked questions. "Thank you, sir. Yes, I'll stay on the line."

He covered the speaker with a hand and yelled up to his Aunt. "They're coming, Aunt Petunia! He said they're on the way!"

He numb, cold, floating as if in a dream. Everything felt slow and distant. Within minutes, he heard sirens outside and red and blue lights shone through the windows into the house.

He ran to open the door for the paramedics. "He's upstairs!" he said, pointing upstairs.

His Aunt came out of Dudley's room to meet them at the top of the landing, her face streaked red and puffy with tears. "Please help him, he's my baby. My only baby. I can't lose another!" She was hysterical.

She was talking about her firstborn daughter, who was born premature and died just at just a few days old. Her name was Rose Marie. What was going to be her nursery ended up becoming Dudley's playroom instead.

He would never get the image of the paramedics carrying Dudley's prone body on an adult-sized stretcher down the stairs, his aunt Petunia following behind, crying, wailing. Wheels popped out from under the stretcher when they got to the bottom and they wheeled him out, scratching the side table on the way in their rush. Petunia didn't even notice, nor care, she just grabbed him roughly by the arm and pulled him along with her into the back of the ambulance. "Stop lollygagging and come on!"

He didn't have time to grab his shoes, but as he sat in the back staring in numb disbelief at the paramedics working on Dudley, he noticed that his Aunt Petunia hadn't either.

Author's Note:

Sorry for the late update, and the shitty quality chapter. I just wanted to put something out and I had a hard time writing it. I didn't want him to be just another sociopathic serial killer.

Also, the thing about the baby Rose Marie is my headcanon. They have a four bedroom house with Dudley's room, Dudley's playroom, and a guest room for Aunt Marge. The way I see it, if you read into it, its possible they intended to have more children.

I was getting complaints about what is apparently called doublespeak or something like that? So i tried to work on it this chapter. Lemme know if its better or worse and what i can do to improve. I feel like its a very sloppily written chapter.