Harry Potter: from Legacy to Dursley

Dudley awoke the next day, feeling well rested. He awoke before most of the others, the only ones present in the common room was Percy Weasley, Ron's older brother and a blonde girl, also a prefect, they were talking, Percy's hand laying on the girl's thigh. They hadn't noticed him, so he walked back into the dormitory, where his peers were still sleeping and tapped at the ancient stone wall behind his bed, tapping into the ancient magic slumbering within. He used this raw power to disappear from the dormitory and reappear in the room of requirement, or outside it rather. It was a trick he had learned in his seventh year, he could travel through the ancient magic holding hogwarts together. He paced in front of it and thought about his old room. With a click, the door appeared and he walked in. Inside, there were many workstations. The potions he had been brewing were expired, so he vanished them, his potteries for his magical plants had shattered, the plants had overgrown the pots and now the walls were full of vines. He focused and the vines slowly receded, turning back into manageable sizes. The coups were empty, he had cleared them out in his seventh year, for he couldn't care for them any longer but he still had plenty of materials from them. He redecorated the room a bit before tapping the wall outside the room and returning to his dormitory, just in time too, as Harry had just woken up, "Morning cousin", he waved.

"Mornin' Dudley", Harry yawned, walking towards the bathroom to brush his teeth. Dudley followed. Unlike his cousin, Dudley used a spell to clean his teeth. It was an easy spell in the first year material.

"Whoa, what spell was that?" Harry asked, toothbrush still in hand.

"A cleaning charm, perfect for cleaning your teeth", he said, "I read about it in the textbooks"

"Really? Can you teach me? That would be so much more convenient than brushing my teeth normally"

"Sure, pull out your wand. The motion is a half circle and the spell is putzen", he demonstrated, cleaning his teeth again.

"Like this? putzen", Harry got it right the first try. Not a surprise, as the spell was very elementary.

Soon, the other students filled into the common room but Harry led his cousin through Hogwarts, into the great hall, explaining the vanishing steps and the changing destinations, "don't worry, a year here and you'll know them by heart", he reassured him, "unless you are neville, his memory isn't exactly the best"

"Neville? You mean the short one, sorta chubby?"

"Look who's talking", Harry snorted, answered by Dudleys chuckle.

They arrived before most others, there were only two dozen students in the great hall, plus the teacher table which was full, the professors engaging in small talk. Harry and Dudley sat down together and began eating. Some toast, beans and a bit of sausage. As they ate, the others slowly filed in.

"Hey Dudley, good to see you", Hermione called, clearly still upset about Harry and Ron's entrance to the school, "Have you found your way down here all alone? I couldn't have done that on my first day. It took me a month to get used to where all the classrooms were, I had to go out an hour early just to find them on time, I didn't want to lose house points for tardiness after all"

"No, my cousin here showed me around"

"Your cousin… you are that Dudley? You seem awfully nice for how Harry described you. I thought you were a totally unrelated Dudley that just so happened to know Harry. Small world huh? What about your parents? Didn't they hate magic?"

"They did but I think they were just jealous, I know I was, when they heard I was a wizard, they were over the moon. I thought that maybe, they would treat Harry better now but I guess that was wishful thinking", Dudley glanced towards Harry, who was silently eating his porridge. As he was looking at his cousin, he could feel something very wrong about him. There was magic in his scar, not too uncommon for curse scars and he didn't know -for obvious reasons- what a botched killing curse's scar would look or feel like but there was something sinister about it. He decided to look into that, probably when Harry was asleep. He couldn't very well start using ancient magic in the open and his scar reeked of ancient magic, an evil kind of ancient magic… maybe a curse? How had it gotten in there? Could it be that Voldemort was a user of ancient magic? Or maybe Harry's parents had performed an ancient magic ritual to protect him? Rituals of ancient magic could be used without the ability to wield ancient magic yourself, it was how moving photographs were made. The potion you developed the photos in was a brew of ancient magic. He himself was the inventor of this potion, he had invented it in his sixth year and gotten stupid rich off selling the rights to the potion, which now was public knowledge. Sebastian was the first to discover that you could brew this potion even without ancient magic running through your veins. Portraits were older, not using ancient magic at all, though he didn't know how to make a portrait. The 'photos' on newspapers, back before he discovered the potion, were paintings, not actual photographs, which meant each copy of the newspaper had to be drawn individually. The daily prophet was amongst the first to use his potion, making the newspapers much cheaper than they previously were and easier to produce. The sale in Newspapers after this new invention almost quintupled, for way more people could now afford to get the daily prophet every day, whereas before only successful wizards and witches or purebloods could pay for a newspaper every day.

But it still was curious that the scar would emit such dark, ancient magic.

The post came soon after and a red envelope was at the center of attention, "T- that is a howler", Neville stammered, "Y- you better open it, I didn't open my nan's howler a few years ago and it was… terrible"

Ron slowly opened the smoking letter and Mrs Weasley's voice rang out, shouting over the table, "RONALD BILIUS WEASLEY! HOW DARE YOU STEAL THAT CAR, YOUR FATHER AND I WERE WORRIED SICK WHEN WE SAW IT WAS GONE. YOUR FATHER IS NOW FACING AN INSPECTION FROM THE MINISTRY, WHAT A MONUMENTAL SHAME. YOU COULD'VE BROKEN YOUR NECK. IF YOU TAKE ONE MORE STEP OUT OF LINE, WE WILL TAKE YOU STRAIGHT BACK HOME, oh and Ginny, we are so proud of you making it to Gryffindor"

All the eyes were on Ron, who was blushing heavily.

The first lesson of the day was Herbology. Professor Lockhart was talking to an annoyed professor Sprout, "And then- ah, students! I have just been giving professor Sprout here some tips for patching up a whomping willow. Not that I want to say I'm better than the good professor, it is just that I have encountered a few of these fascinating and exotic plants during my travels"

"Green house three today, my friends", Sprout directed them towards one of the green houses.

"Harry! I just wanted to have a quick word with you, if you don't mind, professor", Gilderoy grabbed Harry and dragged him away before Sprout could voice how much she minded actually. Dudley looked at his cousin with pity. He didn't like that guy, not one bit and it seemed as if he had fixated on Harry.

It didn't take long for Harry to return to the others but he was scowling, whatever the professor had said, it seemed to have left a sour taste in Harry's mouth.

"Today, we will be working with mandrakes, can someone tell me the properties of this plant?"

Three students raised their hands, Hermione, Dudley and -a bit less enthusiastically- Neville, "let's hear from our newest student then, go on, Mr Dursley"

"Mandrakes, also known as Mandragora has restorative properties, like returning people from petrification, their sap can be used to make many antidotes and reverse curses. Their cry may be fatal if fully mature, though a younger mandrake's cry will stun or knock those who hear it unconscious, depending on its age", Dudley had used this particular plan during his many fights with the ashwinders and he had always liked Herbology, mostly for the teacher, professor Garlick, the young professor was a crush for many of the young, pubescent teenagers at school, though obviously, none of them had a chance with her, for she was their teacher and also into girls, still, it helped him stay focused during class, knowing she was watching, even if he didn't have a shot.

"Excellent, 10 points to Gryffindor", Sprout nodded, "the mandrakes we have here are young, so they won't kill you but you may still fall unconscious if you hear their cry for long enough, so go on, pick up some earmuffs, make sure they are nice and snug around your head and then, take out the mandrake and repot it, making sure to cover their heads in soil"

The student scrambled for one of the less awful looking earmuffs, not that Dudley cared, just taking one that was left, "Now put them on, nice and snug and repot them, I will demonstrate how to do it, just watch closely"

She pulled the mandrake from its pot and even though they couldn't hear it a lot, they could feel the vibrations of its ear piercing shriek, she moved it to a pot and it fought violently not to go back into the earth but when it was submerged in soil, it was quiet again. The other students split into groups of four to repot the mandrakes, as there weren't enough for everyone to have their own. Dudley matched up with Neville Longbottom and two Slytherin Witches. They looked at Dudley with disgust, for they knew he was muggleborn but he ignored them, he was used to this kind of treatment. Professor Black had been just like that, playing down the achievements of the muggle born students and belittling them. It had taken pressure from several pure bloods, professors as well as students(mainly Ominis) to get Dudley(Gregory back then), a reward for special services to the school. Dudley and Neville did most of the heavy lifting, the two slytherin girls looked as if they wanted nothing more than to be away from the plants and dirt. 'Those posh, blue bloods', Dudley scoffed, 'they won't make it far in Herbology with that kind of attitude'

At the end of the lesson, they were all sweaty and covered in dirt. Nothing a good Scurgify couldn't fix.

The Gryffindor's next class was up in the Transfiguration corridor. They were tasked with transfiguring a beetle into a button. Hermione and Dudley did well, transforming them in one go, but the others struggled, some buttons still had a carapace or were still scuttling around with tiny beetle legs and Ron, Ron's wand kept misfiring. It had been in bad shape before the whomping willow but now it was fully snapped, only held together by tape. That anything still happened when he swung it around was a miracle. The Weasleys couldn't afford to buy him a new wand and even if they could, he would never ask, not after that Howler. Dudley could already hear the response 'RONALD BILIUS WEASLEY, AFTER WHAT YOU DID AND ALL THE TROUBLE YOU CAUSED… I CAN BELIEVE THE AUDACITY'

It was sad but he couldn't help but smile schadenfreude and everything. By the end of the class, before Hermione and Dudley sat big piles of buttons, whereas everyone else had managed one, maybe two. Each of the two were awarded five points for their work.

"Looks like you don't need my help after all, Dudley", Hermione chuckled, "you have quite the talent"

"I guess so", Dudley smiled, rubbing one of the buttons between his fingers.