Just as Harry had suspected, Snape’s assignments arrived early the next morning. He was just releasing Errol, who’d had a good night’s rest, when Pig came zooming through the open window, panting, looking like a normal owl who’d just made an all-night trip, for once.Harry frowned, taking the small package from the owl as well as the note attached to his leg. The package, Harry noted, had the dimensions of a paperback novel. Frowning, he opened the letter.

Harry,

Here are all of the assignments Snape gave us over the summer. Mrs. Weasley was nice enough to shrink them to half-size so that Pig could carry them all, but you can blow them up without magic. Go to the library and use the copier to make them bigger. The writing should be a bit fuzzy, but legible.

I’ve done it before, when I forgot some things I needed at home. Mr. Weasley, of course, finds this all incredibly fascinating.

-Hermione

P.S. – He won’t get away with this.

Harry’s eyebrows lifted. Hermione wasn’t one for breaking school rules or defying teachers, but when she did do, she always managed something spectacular. He felt a brief surge of vindicated glee just wondering what the girl planned on doing to Professor Snape.

Harry straightened as he heard a sudden rap on his bedroom door.

“Breakfast!” Dudley announced.

“Wait!” Harry called out, suddenly remembering his cousin’s kindness the day before. “Come in a minute.”

Dudley peered around the half-open door, looking like he expected something magical to leap out. Given the boy’s previous experiences with magic - Dementors and piggy tails and ton-tongue toffee – Harry couldn’t exactly blame him.

“All the way,” Harry snapped. He’d long since learned that Dudley didn’t respond to any other sort of tone.

Dudley managed to slip through the door, a true feat for one of his girth. With an expression of stubborn defiance, he closed it all the way behind him. “What?” he demanded, eyeing the sleepy Hedwig with disgust. Then, his eyes lit on Pigwidgeon, and the expression fell off his features. Harry knew Dudley would never admit it, but he strongly suspected the other boy thought that the tiny owl was sweet.

“Got some cake,” Harry replied simply, nudging the loose floorboard away.

Dudley snickered, looking unsurprised at the hiding-place.

“I use it to hide sweets,” Harry admitted. “Well, I also use it to hide magical objects and books and things,” he added mercilessly, feeling a rush of satisfaction when Dudley flinched. He drew out the cake and opened the top, dismayed when he saw how little was left. His cheeks flushed – he couldn’t really have eaten half of a cake that size at one go, could he? He supposed he had. He cut a generous slice off of what remained, and handed it to his cousin.

Dudley blinked, then surveyed it critically. “It isn’t magic, is it?” he inquired.

Harry shook his head. He supposed it wasn’t an odd question, given the toffee. “Here,” he said. He cut himself a far smaller slice and took a bite.

Dudley grinned at him and began doing the same.

“Dudley!”

Both Dudley and Harry straightened suddenly and guiltily, staring wide-eyed at the closed door. Harry waited for his heartbeat to slow, reminding himself to take deep breaths.

“Dudders, darling, where are you?”

Dudley reverently placed his unfinished cake back into the box, closing the lid and replacing it. “Later, okay?”

Harry nodded. “I need another favor,” he said quickly. “Look, can you take these to the library and make them big enough to read? I’ll give you money.”

Dudley examined the small package and shrugged. “I guess.” He snorted. “Mum and Dad are going to wonder what has me interested in the library all of a sudden. Dad’s already called me a ponce for going the once, especially when he saw the books I’d gotten.” The older boy stood, brushed his hands free of crumbs and moved to the door.

Harry sighed. “Well, tell them you’re going to a friend’s house, or something. The way you do when you don’t want to be bothered.”

Dudley was already outside the door, thumping down the stairs for breakfast, and didn’t reply. 

The sun was setting before Harry realized his shoulders were sunburned and his muscles ached. He had taken to work like it was a harsh meditation, spending the entire day in a daze, half-aware of sound and sensation. It felt almost good, really.When he came back into the house, splattered with paint and feeling disgustingly sweaty, there was a large stack of papers sitting on his bed.

Harry picked them up and flipped through them, groaning. There was easily enough there for a summer’s worth of reading, and more. He rubbed his forehead in circles, realizing he should have known when Hermione of all people had admitted she wasn’t yet done.

He showered, then returned to his room. He was staring at the infamous anemone article when a small tap sounded at the door. He was so absorbed that it didn’t quite register for a moment. Finally, the door opened, and Dudley slipped in.

“What?” Harry murmured. “Oh. Yeah, go ahead.”

Dudley didn’t bother asking for interpretation. He loosened the floorboard and drew out his half-eaten slice of cake. After a moment of inaction, he stared up at Harry, who was sprawled out on his bed. “Being a wizard... you can’t, er, catch that, can you?”

Harry eyed him contemptuously. “Being a Muggle... you can’t, er, catch that, can you?” he echoed in a lumbering, Goyle-like voice.

Dudley snorted. “Just asking.” But he ate the cake, with much in the way of happy exclamations. It stopped bothering Harry after the first minute or so. “What is all of that, anyway?” Dudley wondered.

Harry resigned himself to distraction. “Stuff for school.”

“Oh, that’s revealing. Glad you cleared it up.”

Harry sat up suddenly, glaring at his cousin. “You don’t want to know about my school.”

Dudley shrugged. “I read some of your stuff, and–”

“You read some of it!” Harry squeaked.

“It was just photocopies, it’s not magic in and of itself,” Dudley said in a superior tone, as though pleased to have figured that all out. “Besides, it reads like chemistry to me.”

Harry felt flummoxed. “Y-yeah,” he mumbled, feeling like he’d woken on a different planet that morning. Or was dreaming. Yeah, dreaming, he decided.

“So you take Chemistry?”

“Well – they call it Potions,” Harry replied, the feeling of dreamy unreality persisting. “But yeah, from what I know of chemistry, it’s similar to a practical chemistry course. Put a bunch of stuff together, hope it doesn’t explode. That sort of thing.”

Dudley snorted again, and Harry realized that this was his cousin’s attempt not to laugh. Harry couldn’t help but feel that he and Dudley might make it through the summer if they worked together, so he continued.

“My teacher is a bit of a bastard,” he added lightly. “He didn’t send me my summer work until now.”

“I’d think I’d like that sort of teacher,” Dudley replied.

“No, he’ll still want it all at the start of term,” Harry clarified. “He’s trying to make certain I have a disadvantage, that’s all.”

Dudley didn’t say anything for a moment, just stared thoughtfully at the remainder of the cake in his hand. “I’ve been curious about – your school – for awhile. I was imagining all sorts of things. But you have classes just like me, don’t you?”

Harry pondered this. “Well, I suppose. I mean, some of them are purely magic, like Charms and Transfiguration. But then there’s Herbology and Potions–”

“Like Biology and Chemistry?”

“And Care of Magical Creatures.”

Dudley perked up slightly. “Okay, then. Botany, Chemistry, and Zoology.”

They shared a grin, but Harry was feeling slightly ill. His brain was scrambling to continue the conversation with his cousin, to keep things light and hopefully a bit funny, to cultivate the goodwill that they now shared. He cast about for something else to say, and found it.

“Want to see my birthday present?” he inquired. He opened the desk drawer and fished out the golden bauble. When his hands closed around it, it glowed crimson. Harry blinked, and looked up at Dudley in surprise.

“What does it do?” Dudley wanted to know. His face looked pale and chalky.

“It’s a Dark Detector,” Harry said. “Look, it glows different colors depending on the people around you.”

Dudley frowned, still looking a bit distrustful of the sphere.

“Do you want to hold it? It won’t hurt you.”

Dudley seemed to be taking the last bit as some sort of challenge. His features hardened, and he thrust out his hand. Harry grinned and dropped the golden ball into his cousin’s grasp.

The small light thinned, then flickered before winking out entirely. Dudley’s expression drooped. “Why won’t it light?”

“I expect it’ll only light for a wizard or witch,” Harry explained.

Just as Harry was finishing, the light returned.

“Or not?”

Harry peered into the darkness of the sphere. At the very center was a cool, dim blue-violet glow. “Dudley...?”

Dudley stared at the sphere in consternation. “It shouldn’t be doing that. Right?”

“Right,” Harry whispered. “Too right. Make it go brighter, Dudley.”

“Make it go–!” But it already was. The cool light expanded to twice its size before burning itself out, a very small flare.

Harry reclaimed the bauble with shaking fingers. “Oh. How... how interesting.”

“What does that mean, interesting?!”

“It means... oh, I don’t know what it means. I expect I’ll have to ask Hermione.” Harry frowned, suddenly resenting his first reaction. “Or we can find out ourselves. Here.” He placed the bauble back into Dudley’s hands. “Give it to one of your friends, and see if it lights for them.”

Dudley flushed a dull pink. “And what if I don’t want to?”

“Don’t want to? Don’t you want to know?”

For a moment his cousin was silent, the expression on his face resentful. “Maybe not,” he answered flatly, slapping the item back into Harry’s palm. “For all I know, you’re lying, or it doesn’t work the way you thought, or you’re the one making it glow in the first place.”

In Harry’s hands, the bauble began to shift from red to orange to gold, bathing Harry’s bedroom in a spectrum of warm colors. “Come on, Dudley, it won’t take much doing. Just hand it off to Piers or somebody and–”

“No,” Dudley snapped, standing abruptly. “Thanks for the cake, Harry, and good luck with that... stuff,” he added, nodding towards the huge stack of papers in front of the other boy.

Then, he fled. 

Harry didn’t see Dudley for three whole days after that. His cousin managed to avoid him except at meals, which he could hardly skip given how Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia were feeding the both of them. At that point, Dudley didn’t speak to him, even to ask for ketchup or salt. Uncle Vernon in particular seemed to approve of this.“Best thing all around, Petunia,” he said one evening as the four of them sat around the dinner table. “Best thing all around, that Dudley here has figured the right sort from the wrong sort, if you know what I mean.”

This sounded so like what Draco Malfoy had said on the Hogwarts Express back in first year that Harry couldn’t help but issue a little snort of his own.

“You think that’s funny, boy?” Vernon roared, thumping his meaty fist against the table; even Aunt Petunia jumped a bit. “You think your kind is a little joke to people like me and mine?”

He and his, Harry realized, his eyes going automatically to his cousin. If Dudley was a wizard, or anything like one, he was in some serious trouble. Up until that moment, Harry had been thinking about vengeance against his relatives. What delicious irony it would be if Petunia’s Diddums turned out to be a wizard, himself. Now, watching Dudley’s white face and trembling hand he found himself suddenly hoping that there was no magic whatever about his cousin. For the first time he realized that too much concern might be just as terrible as too little; Dudley, after all, couldn’t even go to the library without having his reading choices examined.

“Well!” Vernon barked.

“Not funny,” Harry admitted, and didn’t say anything else for the rest of the meal.

Meanwhile, Harry continued to work through his Potions assignments, although he’d long since realized there was no chance of his finishing up before he arrived at Hogwarts. The best he could manage would be to do what looked easiest, first, and hope to remain one step ahead of the Potions Master.

One night, three days before the Hogsmeade trip, Dudley let himself into Harry’s room again. He tossed something through the air to land on the bed in front of Harry.

It was the bauble.

“What – when did you-!”

“Nicked it this morning,” Dudley replied.

Harry mastered his anger. “And?”

“And... I gave it to Mum and Dad–”

“ – if they’d even guessed it was magical-!”

“Well, they didn’t. Thought it was a Christmas ornament. Blown glass,” he continued.

Harry sat up, frowning at his cousin, suddenly concerned at the clipped sentences and the odd, helpless cast of Dudley’s shoulders. “Not a thing, eh?”

“Not a thing,” Dudley echoed. “Not one little spark. Not one.”

Harry didn’t know what to say, so he remained silent.

“I haven’t been able to eat since this morning.”

In Dudley, this was an admission of terrible distress. “Do you want some cake?”

Dudley shook his head slowly. “I’m... I’m like you, aren’t I?”

Harry pondered over how to answer this. “Don’t think so, Dudders,” he replied, trying for levity. “It lights up all the way for me, you know. Barely a spark for you. I doubt you’re contaminated in any way.” He couldn’t help the bitterness in his voice.

“I am,” Dudley protested, nodding, his eyes faraway. “Yes, I am.” His eyes shot up, suddenly fierce in his chubby face. “Well? Where is it? Give it to me. I have to know.”

“Give you... what? Where’s what?”

“Your... your wand, you idiot,” Dudley whispered, as though ‘wand’ was a filthy word.

Now Harry knew he’d heard it all. “Vernon’s got my wand, Dudley. Don’t know where he’s tossed it.”

Dudley’s lips firmed, and he glanced at all of the papers littering Harry’s bed. “I’ll bet all of that would go faster if you had your books,” he commented, a seeming nonsequitur.

“Well... yeah, of course it would...”

“Well, I’m going to get them for you, along with your other... things. And in return, I’m going to use your wand.” Dudley stood and marched out the door.

Five minutes later, Dudley had returned, surprisingly quiet for someone of his girth. Harry hadn’t known the other boy could move silently, but apparently he could, given the proper motivation. Dudley dumped a huge pile of belongings on Harry’s bed, then waited while Harry sorted through the pile and withdrew his wand.Holly, phoenix feather, eleven inches, Harry mused. At first, he was reluctant to hand it over, at least as reluctant as he’d been to give it to Vernon Dursley. Then he caught the terrible stubbornness in his cousin’s eyes, and the terror beneath the surface. “All right, Dudley,” he said quietly, and placed the wand in his cousin’s hands.

Dudley nodded, determined. Then he looked blankly at the shaft of wood, turning it over in his hands. “It’s... almost pretty,” he managed. His blue eyes lifted again to Harry’s green ones. “Now what?”

Harry blinked. “Well... uh, lift your arm out... yes, like that.” He moved a piece of parchment in front of Dudley. “Now, say Wingardium Leviosa, and move the wand like this – yeah, just like that.”

Harry watched with something like incredulity while Dudley pointed the wand and repeated his words. Dudley’s eye had been sharp: the motion was proper, but the paper didn’t move.

“Sometimes it takes a few tries...”

Dudley repeated the exercise twelve times. When it was rather obvious that nothing was about to happen, he handed the wand carefully to Harry. “Thank God,” he breathed.

Harry smirked.

“I’m all right with it being you, Harry,” Dudley hastily assured him. “I mean, really, now. But me...”

“The bauble probably’s very sensitive,” Harry guessed. “But if you don’t have enough magic to do Wingardium Leviosa, you’re no wizard.”

Dudley grinned, relieved.