The day everything started to go wrong. He could remember that clearly. It was a warm day in midsummer. Not too hot, still cool enough for outdoor activities to seem more attractive than air conditioning. He was outside, along with most of the neighborhood children and a few of their parents, playing baseball with a plastic orange bat and a ball too light to hurt if it hit anyone on the head.

He was four years old.

At that time, there were seven children living on Privet Drive, all under the age of eight. He and his cousin were the youngest, except for Lyle Schmidt who lived next door, and had a week left before his fourth birthday. Julie and Arnold Carlton were seven and five respectively, and the twins Kay and Katy Armstrong were six.

They had just finished picking teams; Julie, Arnold, and Lyle were on one team with Mr. Carlton, and the other four were on the other team, with Kay and Katy's mother, a short woman who was a little like a mother to the whole neighborhood.

The day had started so perfectly; and then everything, everything had gone wrong for him. It was his turn with the bat. He swung twice at the ball, wildly but enthusiastically, and missed both times. Mr. Carlton moved in a little closer. Determined to hit the ball this time, he pretended not to notice.

Mr. Carlton gently tossed the ball.

He missed, again.

His eyes had filled with tears, and he'd started to sniffle. Kay, waiting in line behind him, had held out her hand for the bat, but he shook his head violently and yelled "No!" He could hear his cousin giggling, and he got angry. "One more time!" He'd yelled. Mr. Carlton glanced at Mrs. Armstrong, who shrugged.

As he stood there, in the green grass of Privet Dr., and prepared to hit the ball (For sure this time!), he had no idea how his life was going to change. All he knew was that he was angry at being laughed at, and angry at the ball for missing his bat, and anyway it was after lunchtime and he was hungry.

The ball was thrown.

This time, as he swung, he hit the ball. A dull thunk of plastic hitting plastic echoed against the nearest houses, and the ball soared away- impossibly high, impossibly far. For a moment, he knew only the bliss of success. He dropped the bat and started towards the purple frisbee that had been set down in place of first base.

Suddenly, he heard it- "Dudley Dursley!" and looked up to see his mother running across the street from number four, where she had evidently been watching the game, yelling his name- in anger. When she reached him, she grabbed him violently by the arm and began to drag him back to the house. She ignored his howls of protest, pausing only long enough to yell at his cousin, Harry, that he should follow them home.

-~-

He didn't understand, that first day, what he had done wrong. He started to figure it out after his dad got home from work, and started yelling. Apparently, plastic kiddie baseballs were not supposed to fly a couple hundred yards down the street, above roof level, before landing in old Mrs. Figg's bird bath and scaring one of her many cats out of one of his nine lives. When Dudley was ordered into the cupboard under the stairs with Harry that night, it was only the first step in a long, hard journey he had accidentally begun.

Now, six years later, so much had changed. Harry and Dudley had been grudgingly allowed to move into the smallest bedroom (not the one Dudley used to sleep in, before he was a freak, which was now used by Vernon to watch TV and drink beer on the weekends) when they were six, because the cupboard had become too small for them both to fit. If they hadn't been so underfed and small, they never would have been able to fit so long.

For about a year after Dudley's first 'freaky thing', there had been times when it looked like things might go back to normal. Every time this happened, however, Dudley would do something else that his parents would freak out over, and he would be thrown back into the cupboard with Harry.

The boys spent their days cleaning and gardening for Petunia, and cooking or running errands in town for both of the older Dursleys. They started school with the other neighborhood kids (much to Vernon and Petunia's dismay, as they were horrified that they would have to spend any money on them), and both boys found it to be one of the most fun things they had ever done. No one there expected them to clean or work, and there were interesting books to read and problems to solve. There were also other kids there, of course, although the cousins were prevented from making friends by Petunia, who noticed every time she saw her son and nephew walking with someone else, and would then sit their parents down for a nice discussion on the mental illness that occasionally gripped the youngsters, causing them to go berserk and lash out at everyone in sight.

Time passed. Six months after Harry and Dudley moved in to the smallest bedroom, they were forced back out, this time taking up residence in the rickety shed that stood in the backyard, which had been empty since a storm had ripped a hole in the back wall (Harry and Dudley had been the ones to spend a backbreaking day moving everything into the garage, too). This time, it was to make room for newborn Liliana Dursley, a redheaded baby girl that had been named for Harry's mother (which confused both Harry and Dudley at the time, because she always claimed to hate Lily and James Potter, but then again they had never understood Petunia much anyway. Maybe she had liked Lily, once).

In truth, this was when things started looking up for the boys. True, they now had more work, since they had to take care of Lili as well as tend to their other chores (and as she got older, Lili piled even more work on them by becoming a spoiled brat), and Petunia and Vernon would get very mad if they neglected her for even a moment.

But on the other hand, they were no longer sleeping under the same roof as the other Dursleys, which (due to the ancient adege, out of sight, out of mind) meant they were usually forgotten, meaning less was demanded of them. The shed, after a hard couple of day's work while Vernon and Petunia took Lili on a weekend trip, became a nice place to live. With the hole in the wall boarded up, and most of the dust cleaned out, it was easily the nicest place Dudley could remember sleeping in for years, and the nicest place Harry could remember, period.

When they weren't at school or working at their chores, Harry and Dudley spent nearly all their time in the shed. By the time of Harry's tenth birthday, the shed had acquired two sleeping bags, a couple of ratty old blankets, and a few dozen books. Most of these had come from the local library; one of the librarians occasionally traded old books the library was getting rid of, in exchange for some time spent helping with odd jobs. In lieu of anything else to occupy their time, these had become the cousins' greatest source of entertainment. Much of the same way, Petunia and Vernon's denial of human companionship to the two had turned Harry and Dudley from cousins to friends.

By the time they were ten, Harry and Dudley had grown up a lot more than most boys their age. Not physically, of course; both were at an average height and weight for a seven or eight year old. Mentally, however, they had figured out a lot about life that most kids (thank God) never have to learn. They knew, for example, that sometimes if they wanted to eat, their food would have to come from sources most kids would turn their noses up at. Garbage bins, mostly. Sometimes it was stolen. When you're hungry enough, the boys learned, laws tend to mean a lot less than you always thought they did. They learned that if you need to, you can turn a little bit of 'freakiness' to your advantage. A faster escape, a minor distraction... if it can be controlled, it should be used.

They learned that when one person looks at another person, what they expect to see there is normality. If they see anything else, they are disgusted, hateful, and a little bit afraid. That, of course, was why Vernon and Petunia had turned the boys out of the house, while they doted on Lili to the point of ridiculosness.

Of course, there was one strange thing about this that the boys never managed to figure out. Vernon, Petunia, and even Lili called boy Harry and Dudley freaks. But while Dudley admitted that he perhaps deserved this label, as he did indeed do freaky things (and had never failed to when it seemed they might help him or his cousin), and although the Dursleys frequently referred to Harry's parents as freaks as well, Harry himself had never once shown an aptitude for it himself.

-~-

On Harry's tenth birthday, things changed again for the cousins.

This time, it was caused by #4 exploding.

-~-

A/N: Okay, I know I'm the only one laughing right now at that last line, but don't worry, I promise that I will definitely update! Probably not until next Sunday, since I have school and tennis practice Mon-Fri, and a tennis tournament on Saturday, but I will eventually update!

Oh, and before I forget... please do not bother to review, because I know I'm the only one that likes my writing. I'm probably a coward, but I don't enjoy reading flames, so I've never read a single review. If you review, you're wasting no one's time but your own.

Thanks for reading! :D