Chapter 1: The Collection

1.

The Collection

Dudley Dursley couldn’t sleep. This was not unusual. He’d inherited an active and curious mind from his mother, Petunia, the nosiest resident of Privet Drive.

At number four, where Dudley had grown up, there was only one light on and that was his bedside lamp. His mother and father, Vernon, had long since moved out. Mr Dursley had retired from Grunnings several years earlier. He and Petunia had decided, having accumulated too much stress and trauma, to move to a villa in Spain, leaving their precious son in charge of number four.

Dudley had taken his usual cocktail of tablets, but it was no good. Nothing calmed his wild mind. He was thinking about his childhood, his past that had been both exceptionally normal – thank you very much, and exceptionally strange all at the same time.

He’d gone to school, like all the other children in Little Whinging. And yet, he’d witnessed his aunt inflate like a balloon and float away into the sky.

Dudley had left school and found a job at the local DIY shop. But he also remembered a flying car hovering outside their house one night many years ago.

Dudley did so many things the other local men his age did. He read the newspapers, he drank in the local pub, albeit too often. He’d been on dates, celebrated birthdays and even took peaceful holidays in Norfolk with his old school chums Piers and Dennis. However, he didn’t feel close to them. He never had. Especially now as a frown man. Dudley knew nobody could relate to him. And he could never divulge the secrets about the strange, twisted things that had happened to him in his youth.

Nobody would ever believe he’d had a pig’s tail surgically removed his lower back when he was 11, put there by a giant, bearded man. The locals would laugh in his face if he told them he’d watched people disappear through the fireplace in his very own living room. Or how he’d eaten a poisoned sweet that made his tongue swell up like an enormous slug. Or that time envelopes came pouring down through chimney. And there was the floating dessert that splattered over his parents’ dinner guest one night. Or, worst of all, the cloaked figure that tried to suffocate him, leaving him ice cold and tearful for weeks afterwards.

“Did. I. Dream it? All of it?” Dudley asked himself. He popped another tablet into his mouth, washing it down with flat Cola from the old bottle beside him.

He’d tried to talk his parents about it all. But they refused. “Don’t be ridiculous, Dudley.” They’d hiss, “you dreamt it.” Shutting down the subject before Dudley could even finish a sentence.

All these tormenting, mind-boggling happenings were linked, of course, to Dudley’s cousin, Harry. Harry Potter. An exceptional boy whom, Dudley recalled, had magical powers. He felt guilty for thinking that. Vernon and Petunia would explode if Dudley so much as uttered the M-word.

“There is no such thing as magic!”

He felt those familiar, fearful sensations rising in him, fluttering like moths inside his chest and in his stomach. This internal tug-of-war had plagued him all his life. Shoving him back and forth between two equally horrid possibilities; I’m insane or I’m a liar.

*

“You’re not a liar, Mr Dursley.” The lady seated opposite him spoke calmly, as if she genuinely liked him. She looked up from her notes and continued. “Thoughts we believe don’t make us liars.”

She was of Indian origin, well-dressed and distinguished. Someone who had spent a long time building her level of success.

“I’m a freak.” Dudley whispered; his tone saturated with shame. “I’m mad. Where have these memories come from? How can events I have made up feel so real?”

“Mr Dursley,” his therapist continued calmly, unfazed by what she was hearing. “False Memory Syndrome is something afflicts people for countless reasons. I am here to help you find out your reason. Now, you mentioned in our last session your parents and their lack of emotional availability in your later life. After the departure of your cousin who lived with you. Harry, was it?”

“Harry Potter, yes. All of this is because of him.” Dudley began to seethe.

“We’re not here to establish blame, remember, Mr Dursley.”

But Dudley couldn’t help it. He felt his emotions rising like a great wave. His eyes stung, his throat thickened, and he began to cry.

“This is healthy.” The therapist said, handing him some tissues, “let it out, Dudley.”

She helped make Dudley’s mind feel better. Quieter. Tidier and cleaner. Over the previous weeks since their sessions began, Dr Patil had listened to all that troubled Dudley Dursley and allowed him to acknowledge some very important facts.

His parents were not nice people.

There was more they could have done to care for their son.

They mistreated their nephew, Dudley’s cousin, which enabled Dudley to believe it was acceptable to mistreat others.

Dudley Dursley was a damaged, 43-year-old man.

Dudley’s crying was coming to an end. He massaged his temples and stared down at the carpet, unaware of what his therapist was about to do.

Dr Pavarti Patil produced her wand from her jacket. Aiming it at her client’s bowed head, she whispered, “obliviate.” Immediately a quivering haze, like heat rising off a hot road, emitted slowly from Dudley’s head and gathered like a smoky cloud around the ceiling light. Dr Patil watched him physically relax as every painful memory of Harry Pooter, of magic, witchcraft and wizardry vacated his mind forever.

Suddenly, Dudley gazed up, his eyes absent. Dr Patil smiled innocently at him, her wand nowhere in sight.

“What were we talking about?” He frowned.

“Erm,” Dr Patil glanced at the blank pad in her lap. “You were telling me you’re too stressed out to sleep.”

“Oh,” Dudley mumbled, bewildered. “I don’t feel that tired anymore.” He looked around, observing a strange mist that had filled the room. Or was it just his eyes?

Dr Patil rose from her seat and opened the window, allowing the mist to escape.

“Nothing a week off work won’t fix. Have a nice holiday somewhere and get some overdue housework out of the way. Always makes me feel better.” She grinned and handed him a signed sick note.

*

That night, Dudley Dursley snuggled down into his unwashed duvet, eyes heavy, mind completely peaceful.

Fortunately for him, Dudley had not taken the time to part the curtains and look across the street to number seven. Had he done so, he would have seen two men in black robes entering the home of Mrs Figg, the elderly neighbour the Dursleys had no interest in.

They emerged moments later with Mrs Figg in their grip, still in her night gown and slippers, trembling with fright.

The taller of the two men aimed his wand at her throat. “No tricks, keep it shut.” Amycus Carrow hissed.

“You precious treasure, you,” the second man giggled with sinister glee, “and to think you were right under our noses all this ti-”

“Shut up, Alecto,” Amycus kicked him hard, “this whole street’s full of filthy Muggles, don’t be waking them up.”

Without a moment to lose, the Carrows placed their hands on the portkey, innocently disguised as a bird house on Mrs Figg’s lawn, and disapparated along with their prisoner.

Once more, Privet Drive was left in its silent, lamplit state.

Across the road, Dudley Dursley fell into a deep, untroubled sleep.