A/N: So here is the last little follow-up on this story and it's now complete. My apologies that it took a little longer to get out than I had hoped. Thanks to everyone who has read this story, reviewed it, or put it on their alert or favorites lists. Again, we're still not DH compliant, I started this way before DH came out and I felt that to try to work it into DH canon would have seriously compromised the flow, so if you can get past that, I hope you enjoy it.

Epilogue

The pounding on the door woke Dudley from a very sound sleep. A quick glance at the clock showed revealed that it wasn't just his perception; it was insanely early in the morning for someone to be pounding incessantly on his door. But pounding they were and they didn't appear to be letting up at all, if anything, the pounding was getting louder. Fearing the wrath of his neighbors if he didn't make it stop soon, he disentangled himself from the warm body next to him, fought his way out from under the duvet and without even bothering with slippers and a dressing gown he stumbled for the door, muttering under his breath. "It's got to be Nigel again, who else would banging on my door at half two in the bloody morning, likely had too much to drink again and forgot which flat is his?" Flipping on a light switch and blinking as he was unprepared for the brightness, he reached for the door, prepared to deal yet again with the hapless Nigel, who actually lived a floor above him with his young bride, but had an unfortunate tendency to down a few too many pints at the pub down the street and hit the wrong button in the lift while making his way home. However, much to Dudley's surprise, when he finally managed to wrench his door open, it wasn't his drunken neighbor standing there with his fist upraised ready to knock again, but rather his cousin, looking incredibly tired but with a huge smile on his face.

"It's a boy!" Harry crowed before engulfing the half-asleep Dudley in a big hug. "Nice pants by the way."

Dudley looked down at himself, he'd answered the door in nothing but a pair of boxers with a pattern of bright yellow toy ducks printed on them and answered dryly, "Thanks. They were a gift." Then he woke up enough to realize what Harry had said first. "A boy! Congratulations! It's about time" he crowed as he stepped back to let him in, reaching over and turning on the light. "Have the girls met him yet?"

"Not yet, I'll take them over in the morning, but I stopped at Ron and Hermione's to tell them before I came here. They were not horribly thrilled to be woken up in the middle of the night. Lily and Molly were very disappointed to hear that they now have to live with a boy and Becca didn't really care, she just wanted to go home."

Dudley could hardly believe that it had been eight years since the cousins had reconnected on that busy street but one only had to look at Harry and Ginny's three daughters to see that it truly had been. The oldest, Lily, had celebrated her seventh birthday the previous March, but the memories of her birth and holding her at just a few hours old as Ginny's family swarmed around them, thrilled to at last have a little girl in their midst. It was hard to reconcile the love he felt for that tiny, red-faced squalling scrap of humanity and with the overwhelming feelings he had for the cheerful bouncing child with the curly dark hair who had just last week grinned up at him with a gap-toothed smile as she described her latest maneuver on her new broom. "A real grown-up broom Uncle Dudley! It's not super fast like Mummy and Daddy's brooms, but it's not a baby broom with safety charms like Molly's either!"

A shriek of protest countered her description of her sister's broom as a baby broom. Molly Potter at five was without a doubt one of the most stubborn, fiercely independent children that Dudley had ever met. A tiny replica of her mother, both in looks and attitude, Harry's second daughter hated ever being told that she was too little to do anything. She was convinced in her own mind that she could fly as well, run as fast, jump as high, as not only her older sister and cousins, but as the adults around her. Add in her total fearlessness of the unknown and it made little miss Molly quite a handful to deal with. She was a brash and loud tomboy, completely rambunctious and totally unconcerned about who she angered or irritated on her way through life and Dudley loved her completely.

By contrast, the littlest of the Potter girls was the one that Ginny would have sworn was switched at birth if it wasn't for the fact that she was undeniably Harry's daughter, from the bright green eyes to the knobby knees and uncontrollable hair. But as alike as she was to her father in appearance, little Rebecca Potter was nothing like either of her parents in personality. She was as her mother put it, a total girlie-girl. Any attempts to dress her in anything other than pink would result in not a tantrum like her older sisters, but instead silent tears rolling down her chubby little cheeks and a look of such hurt in her eyes that even Ginny, who had taken the role of disciplinarian with their children (since she said that if she counted on Harry to do it, the kids would spend everyday jumping off the roof) would give in to her. She loved to wear anything that was sparkly and instead of a teddy bear or security blanket, she had a little white purse that she carried everywhere with her and even slept with. It had been said many times within the Weasley family that she accessorized better at 2 and a half than either of her parents did as adults and Hermione Weasley even commented that the child appeared to be sharing a spirit with someone called Lavender Brown, which resulted in some good-natured teasing of her husband by his brothers.

And now Harry and Ginny had a new son to round out their family and Harry's happiness was contagious. Dudley couldn't help but return his cousin's grin as he started asking questions. "So does this new addition have a name yet?"

"Yep. James Sirius Potter. He was born at 11:18 last night, weighs just under three and a half kilos, has a full head of hair that unfortunately looks like he inherited from me and the greenest eyes that the healer said he's ever seen in a newborn." Harry was bouncing on his feet in excitement in a way Dudley had only ever seen the three prior times he'd shown up to announce the birth of his daughters.

A pair of slender arms snuck around Dudley's waist from behind and a soft voice spoke over his shoulder. "Congratulations Harry."

It turned out that Dudley's winter weekend spent at the Potter's home had been the catalyst he needed to make some long postponed changes in his life. The week after returning he decided he was finally ready to give up on the agreement he had made with his parents concerning his plans for graduate school. He had started looking at alternate ways to finance his education, and had been thrilled to find that his undergraduate marks were good enough to earn him a scholarship from a small school in northern England and between that and some student loans, he could manage to cover the cost of graduate school without any help from his parents and had started putting out feelers for a job and flat in the town where the school was located. This proved to be fortuitous as soon after, his father came to visit him in his office right as Harry was leaving after having joined Dudley for lunch. What followed was less of a discussion and more of a screaming match, ending only when Dudley, seriously concerned for the state of his father's heart, ended up calling an ambulance because he was sure Vernon was having a heart attack. The following week had been chaotic, his father, upon his release from the hospital, ignored the doctor's orders to stay calm and yelled until his face turned purple again. His mother cried and Dudley ended it by quitting his job, packing his small car to capacity and leaving the city, his destination a small northern city and the fulfillment of his goals and dreams.

The next few years had found Dudley finishing school and moving back to London to take a position helping abused and neglected children, wanting to make sure that children didn't have to suffer in silence like Harry had growing up. He also spent more and more time with his cousin and his family. Harry's young daughters grew up calling him Uncle Dudley and delighting in the muggle toys he often brought them. It was on one of his frequent weekends visiting their home that he was introduced to Elaine, a primary school teacher. She was the squib sister of one Hermione's co-workers and a frequent babysitter of the young Weasley children. They hit it off almost immediately, finding common ground in their work with children and their positions on the outskirts of the magical community and they married soon after Dudley finished school. They bought a flat on a quiet street and built a circle of friends, both muggle and magical.

His relationship with his parents grew more distant however. They spoke weekly on the phone during the years he spent finishing his graduate work, but he he didn't actually see them in person again until he left school and brought Elaine to Surrey to introduce her to her future in-laws. They liked her well enough until they realized that she was the only "normal" one from what they called a family of freaks, they then tried desperately to talk Dudley out of marrying her, to no avail. Again, Dudley's mother cried, his father yelled, but he stood his ground and informed them that he was getting married with or without their approval. They did finally consent to come to the wedding, where they glared at nearly everyone in attendance and muttered under their breath, embarrassing him to no end.

Since then, Dudley's interactions with his parents had been even more strained and superficial, as they didn't want to hear about his job, about Harry or his family, or about the time they spent with Elaine's family. The once weekly phone calls became monthly phone calls. They talked about how Elaine was decorating the new flat, how well Grunnings was doing, Vernon and Petunia's new car, what the neighbors on Privet drive were up to and all the latest gossip concerning his old school chums and Aunt Marge. He ended each conversation with vague promises about coming to visit more often and hung up feeling frustrated and a little guilty that this is what his relationship with his parents had come to. Three months ago, he shared the closest thing to a meaningful conversation he had with his parents in years. He had called them, excited beyond belief to inform them that in six months time, they would be grandparents, but instead of being happy, they were upset, going on and on about how he risked having a freak of a child. Dudley had not spoken to them since, refusing to let them ruin his joy over his impending fatherhood.

Even now, as Elaine stood behind him, the hard swell of her belly pressing into his back, as Harry continued to tell the details of his son's entrance into the world, he again felt the joyous anticipation realizing that shortly he would be in the same position of informing his friends and family about the birth of his child. He grinned at Harry. "So when can we come meet this young man?"

"As soon as you put some clothes on." Harry glanced pointedly at Dudley's toy duck boxers and raised an eyebrow. "After all, you don't want to scare him."

Dudley laughed. "Give us a couple of minutes and we'll drive over, I'm not sure Elaine would be up to a portkey right now." He could feel her shaking her head emphatically. "You want to ride with us or meet us there?"

"I'll meet you there." And with a quick turn and a quiet pop, he was gone.

Turning and taking his wife into his arms, Dudley bent his head and kissed her, the excitement of the Potter's new baby building even more anticipation for the arrival of their own soon. He had never imagined just how happy he would be, with a job that he loved, a wife he adored and an extended family that he doted on. He could feel the baby kicking and again thanked whatever little tendril of fate that led him not only to the chance meeting with Harry on the street, but to the opportunity he had all those years ago to break out of the Dursley form he'd been molded into and to become his own person, a person he could be proud of.

~finis~