FIC: Not Quite The Same As The Boys In Blue (NC-17, Dudley/Seamus)
Title: Not Quite The Same As The Boys In Blue
Author/Artist: ???
Prompt: 60: When Dudley is threatened by a guy he used to bully, who is now a psychopath on the run from the police, Dudley goes to Harry for help. Harry doesn’t turn his back to his cousin and sets one of the less good Aurors on the case, because you don’t have to be the best to fight a Muggle. That Auror turns out to be Seamus, who can’t keep his mouth shut. (Adult characters)
Pairing, or gen: Dudley/Seamus
Rating: NC-17
Warning(s): Bad swears, references to torture and bullying, explicit anal sex
Word count/medium: 6,000
Summary/Excerpt: ...'You're getting wizards mixed up with those super-heroes you lot've got splashed all over your comics and your picture houses. We do not exist in order to save your day.' Dudley has to find a reason why Seamus ought to protect him.
Author's or Artist's notes: Thanks to the mods for being awesome and patient and kind. Thanks to J & E for the betas, too. I wrote this in a hurry, all mistakes are mine and I apologise for them.
Disclaimer: Harry Potter and all associated characters and settings remain the intellectual property of JK Rowling and her associates. We are very grateful for permission to play with them.
Not Quite The Same As The Boys In Blue
Hand delivered. Through his letter box. Dudley's hand shook so much that the grubby scrap of paper fluttered against itself. It would have been unnerving enough on its own.
I got out. You scared yet? You shood be you cunt. I know were you live.
That morning he had received eight texts messages in rapid succession, all from Piers, all saying Call me or answer yr fucking phone, some with added insults and swear words. The last had just said: slimer. There were also fourteen missed calls logged from Piers. Dudley had been swimming. As he dried his hair, he'd pulled his phone from his shoe, turned the sound on, looked at the screen and begun to panic. Straight away, he phoned Piers back, to hear that sweet, irritating woman's voice say, 'It has not been possible to connect your call. Please try later or send a text.'
Piers hadn't answered later either, nor had he replied to any of Dudley's texts.
Slimer had been a greasy, skinny wimp in the year below them. Dudley could admit it now; they had gone too far with Slimer. Locking him in the gardener's shed overnight, pinning him down and forcing worms into his ears, hanging him by his wrists from the overhead pipes in the bathroom can't have been fun for the little maggot. He had been irresistible, though. He had whimpered so prettily and he never told. It kept the other squirts in line, seeing what got done to Slimer, and praying it wouldn't be done to them.
Only then he and Piers went too far. They set fire to the snivelling wanker's dressing gown when he was still in it and they waited just a little too long before chucking him in the biology pond. When they dragged him out, he was gibbering. It wasn't like they hadn't got him to sick bay straight away after that, but it had been too late.
The notice in Assembly had just been to say that he'd been sent home to recover. The TV news a week later had carried Slimer's school photo and it had turned out that he'd had a name and a little sister. Raymond Lewis Arrested for Bludgeoning Eight Year-Old Girl, had been the headline.
At the trial, the psychiatrist had talked a lot about 'persistent and extreme bullying', which had brought the school into disrepute. Smeltings had made much of reviewing and publishing their Bullying Policy, and training First Years about who to go crying to, but they had never investigated Slimer's own bullies. He and Piers had got away without punishment or condemnation.
Maybe that was when Dudley had started to ease up on that kind of thing. Or maybe it was a few weeks later when Harry had seen off the magical mist which had cried to him in many voices - several of them Slimer's. He had never given up pushing people around entirely; Dudley didn't expect anything less than exactly what he wanted and when people were reluctant to give him that, he wasn't above persuading them. He had eased off on the torture, though.
Slimer had been sentenced to an indefinite stay in one of those high security nutter prisons, Dudley had spent his year in hiding, and Piers had aced all his exams as well as getting top marks in the coursework by intimidating nerds into doing it for him. Piers was a banker now. Or had been up until Dudley had got out of the swimming pool. Dudley swam before and after every shift because free pool time was one of the perks of working for the gym. Well, the only perk unless you counted walking through the changing rooms in the hopes of catching a flash of bare buttock. Neither of which made up for being polite to underdressed, saggy, women who wanted to be fit, but hoped they could pay him to do the exercises for them.
Dudley looked out of his front window in Chester onto his street of tight-packed, tiny, terraced houses. It was well-lit by orange street lights which were just warming up as darkness fell. There was nobody out there, unless they were crouching behind a parked car. His heart rate sped even more, which he hadn't thought possible. Both sides of the road were lined with little cars, all parked as close to each other as they could get. Slimer was probably behind one of them. Dudley tried Piers' number again.
This time the call was answered. 'This is Police Sergeant Devlin speaking. Could I ask your name and your relationship to Mr Polkiss.'
Dudley only just managed to force words from his tight throat. 'Dudley Dursley. We were school friends. What's happened to Piers?'
'I'm afraid that information forms part of an ongoing police investigation which I am not at liberty to divulge.'
'I got a note. I don't feel safe. Help me.' He could hear that he sounded almost as scared as he felt.
They sent a couple of constables to his house and they sat on his futon in the sitting room drinking instant coffee while they took a statement. They put the scrap of paper in a clear plastic bag. Then they left, saying that someone would be in touch.
Someone would be in touch? When? After he was dead? After Slimer had pulled out each of his finger and toe nails individually and fed them down his cock, before slicing it off and choking Dudley with it? Dudley had always been very inventive about torture methods. He had always been the perpetrator, though. Now his imagination was able to supply him with all sorts of fucked up pain which Slimer could inflict on him and he didn't like it one bit.
'When?' he had asked the police officers.
'In due course', had been the unsatisfactory answer.
Dudley checked all the doors and all the windows. Then he paced. He closed all the curtains. He paced some more, made a cup of tea, didn't drink it. He got worried about what might be happening outside, so he opened all of the curtains again. He sweated. He kept away from the doors.
In the early hours, all of a sudden, he had had enough. He swore loudly and left the house, automatically checking his pockets for his phone, wallet, keys. He wished he had a car. He did have strong legs, though, and he knew how to run. He ran to the train station, but found it closed up for the night. While he ran, he had been tallying up his advantages and disadvantages, working out a system for bettering Slimer.
As he stood in the extreme quiet of early morning, bare arms raising goose-bumps, the sentence which kept drumming through his mind was, 'I have a cousin who could curse him...' He knew where the Magical part of Chester was. Nobody else he knew had noticed it, but then they didn't know what to look for. He'd spotted too many owls around there, behind the derelict cinema, and he knew that was how those weirdoes communicated. Dudley needed to get hold of an owl, and he needed to get a message to Harry. He set off running again.
He was exposed there, sitting on the doorstep of the Owl Post office, but somehow he felt safe. Most of them were safe in their beds, but he knew that anyone living round here had powers which Slimer could never overcome. Not that he had ever given the Wizarding World reason to save him. He just knew that the torments he had suffered at their hands had been dished out to him because he was a bully. Now that he was a victim, he trusted them to protect him as they had protected Harry. Or perhaps - it occurred to him - he was just calm because his mind had snapped already.
When he had first run into this street, he had felt a strong compulsion to turn back, a feeling that he ought to be elsewhere. Once he had realised that that was just what they wanted him to think, and he had started looking about him properly, he noticed all sorts of things. There were cauldrons piled high in a shop window, announcements about Quidditch matches, odd hats and brooms in the front gardens. Then there was this place: The Owl Post Office. He waited
The night fell away with no appearance from Slimer, and a hunched old bloke in a lilac dress opened up the shop from the inside. Dudley followed him in.
'I, er, don't really know how this works,' he started. 'But I want to send this letter to a wizard.' He had spent the night composing it.
'You're a Muggle,' the old guy said.
It was that obvious? Dudley didn't know whether to be flattered or insulted. He just nodded. He pulled some change out of his pocket.
The Postmaster viewed it suspiciously. 'I think we'll make this Pay On Receipt,' he said, 'I can't be bothered trudging up to Gringott's to change that lot. What was the name of the receiving wizard?'
'Harry Potter.'
It was as though Dudley had performed a spell himself. The old man's attitude transformed instantly.
'Sir should have said earlier. I am so sorry. No charge of course for Mr Potter. Do you know him well?'
'He's my cousin.'
'My goodness! Mr Potter's Muggle cousin! In my little shop. What an honour.' The man pulled a stick from his sleeve and Dudley was alarmed to find a fiercely stuffed floral armchair floating right at him over the counter of the shop. He ducked.
'Please, please take a seat. Do you wish to wait for the reply? I shall send this off to the Head Auror immediately.'
There was a flap and a squawk. Dudley tried not to flinch as an owl flew down from the ceiling. After all, he had been expecting to see one of the dratted birds since he had walked in. It was just because they had had so many descend on them that time his dad had been trying to keep Harry's letter from him, that was all. It had been frightening for an eleven year-old, even one as tough as Dudley had been.
Wait for the reply? Here? With all those birds and the freak customers? Well, Dudley didn't have anywhere else to go and he still felt oddly calm and safe.
Customers popped in and out of the shop all morning. Most of them did literally do that. There was a loud 'pop' and they just appeared. It made Dudley jump every time. Several of them brought him food, newspapers, cups of tea and sweets, though, once the Postmaster had told them who he was. He liked this kind of deference. He had always felt entitled to it. It was ironic, though, that it was his relationship to Harry which had brought it to him at last.
Owls constantly flew in through the windows at the back, and he would look up hopefully, then away again when the Postmaster shook his head. When the reply came, though, Harry didn't send an owl, he came in person.
There was another 'pop', Dudley flinched again, and then there he was: still scrawny and speccy with the same scruffy black hair. Dudley grinned. Harry gave him an exasperated sigh in return.
'I got your letter. This had better be important,' Harry said. 'I've got a full day planned.'
'My life is in danger.'
Harry sighed again. 'Isn't it your turn to save mine this time?'
Dudley shrugged and spread his palms. 'I'm only a poor defenceless Muggle.'
'Defenceless? I thought you were here because you'd tortured a man to insanity.'
Dudley hung his head in what he hoped looked like an apologetic manner.
'Come on, then.' Harry grabbed his arm.
Dudley started to stand, but Harry twisted round and suddenly the world fell away leaving Dudley's stomach in the Owl Post Office. Then they were indoors again, somewhere he didn't know, and Dudley landed on his arse, retching.
'Did you not give the man any warning?' asked a voice with an accent Dudley was too dizzy to place.
'I kind of forgot,' Harry replied.
Several laughs rang through the room then, and a glass of water was placed in his grip. Dudley sipped at it.
'Ok, Seamus, you're up to speed?'
'I would say so.'
'Right, we'll be going then. Ron, you'd best get your team to the Manor. The rest of us will raid Knockturn.'
The room was filled with a noise like the moment when all the party poppers go off. Dudley sipped before looking up to find himself in a high-ceilinged, wood-panelled room. The curtains were burgundy velvet to the floor, which was carpeted in a swirling green pattern. There was only one other man there. They looked at each other.
'So. Are we right then?' the man asked. Irish, that was the accent.
'Huh?'
'I've read that letter you sent Harry and he's given me a bit o' background on yer. I'm not afraid of you. My name's Seamus, by the way.'
'Where's Harry?'
'He's a very busy man, you know. Head of Department. He'll not waste his time on a case like this.'
'It's not a waste of time! My life's in danger!'
'Right you are. So. That's why he's put me on it, though it's more than you deserve if you ask me.'
Dudley hadn't and he didn't see why he ever would. 'I wanna talk to Harry.'
'Not happening. He's currently chasing up a Dark Coven full of unregistered Creatures. I would have been along, too, if it hadn't been for you, so I'm not best pleased with ya. You could at least be grateful.'
'He's doing what?'
'Well, he is the Head Auror. What did you think he'd be doing? Putting up Lost Kneazle posters?'
'He's the Head what?'
Seamus gave Dudley a pitying, exasperated look. 'It means he saves Wizardkind from evil on a daily basis. Which is "same old same old" as far as Harry's concerned, of course.'
'You're a Magic, though, right? And you'll look after me?' Dudley had given up on trying to understand what was going on, and decided to prioritise.
'I'm a wizard, sure.' Seamus pulled his magic stick out of his sleeve. 'I'm a fully trained Auror, too. Let's get on with this. So, ordinarily I'd be taking a statement from you, but I think your letter covers that. You tormented some poor kid until he broke and now want to avoid the revenge you've got coming to you-'
'I wouldn't put it like that-'
Seamus continued as though Dudley hadn't spoken: '-so all I need from you now is some idea as where you think the poor psychopath might be. Then we can start looking for him.'
No. Dudley stood up. 'Uh, no. I want to stay as far away from Slimer as possible. I just need you to protect me while I hide out until the police find him.'
Seamus laughed. 'Do you now? Well, I'm afraid that's not quite how it works. Sounds like me Mam was right about Muggles. See, this is the whole justification for the Secrecy Act. You all just want to make use of us for your own ends as soon as you find out about us. Well, I'm afraid you don't get your own pet wizard bodyguard big man, cousin of Harry Potter or not. And let me tell you, if you weren't related to the Chosen One, you'd have fuck all chance of getting anyone to take any notice of this problem of yours at all.'
'But I'm a victim! I'm in danger!' Dudley whined.
'You're getting wizards mixed up with those super-heroes you lot've got splashed all over your comics and your picture houses. We do not exist in order to save your day.' Seamus pulled a long white feather out of his other sleeve and then waved his stick about until a yellowed piece of paper appeared. He licked the less feathery end of the feather, then held it against the paper. 'This is a case. Your victim may have committed a crime and I've been charged with investigating that. Now, give me a clue where this Slimer might be hiding out so we can be getting on with this.'
Dudley was ashamed to hear his voice shake as he said, 'I think he's watching my house.'
'Splendid!' Seamus announced. 'Address?'
Dudley gave it, and Seamus wrote it down on the paper with the feather. Weird. It looked like quite normal messy handwriting, though.
'Do you have the Apparition co-ordinates for that?'
'Huh?'
'We'll have to use the Floo, then. You'll be on the Floo network?'
'Huh?'
'I'd need to be able to concentrate on your house if we were going to Apparate without co-ordinates. And I don't know what your house looks like.'
'Apparate?'
'Side-Along Apparition. It's the way you came here. With Harry.'
'I'm not doing that again!' Dudley decided to remember the name so he could avoid it in future. Side Along.
'How else do you propose we get from London to Chester? By Muggle transport? Your man Slimer could have slaughtered twelve football teams, got married and had baby Slimers by the time we got there. By the way, why do you call him Slimer?'
'When he started school he had these two long snot trails on his upper lip.' Dudley didn't care who else got killed as long as it wasn't him. He thought slowing down their approach on Slimer was a very good idea. 'Wait, what? We're in London? How did that happen?'
'And you thought that not wiping his nose was grounds for a prolonged program of persecution culminating in setting him on fire then nearly drowning him?'
'You never did anything stupid when you were young?' Dudley demanded defensively.
'Sure I was taunting Dark wizards into hitting me with unbearable pain when I was a schoolboy. The point is, how will we get to your house when I can't picture it?'
'Why don't you just use Street View on Google maps?' Dudley decided to ignore what he couldn't follow - which was a lot of what Seamus said.
It was Seamus who looked bamboozled now.
'Haven't you even got internet? How can you play at police when you don't even have internet?' Dudley pulled his phone out. Seamus flinched from it, then regarded it suspiciously. 'I just hope I can get signal on it or my 3G's useless. I don't expect this place to have anything as civilised as wireless.'
'I think there's one in the canteen, but I don't know how WWN's going to help.'
Dudley managed to get one bar. He went roaming around, near windows, then held it up in the air, finally achieving two bars by standing on a shiny table. 'That'll have to do, but it'll be bloody slow.' He tapped his address into Google maps. Then he looked over at Seamus while it loaded. Unexpectedly, Seamus was looking up at him with horrified astonishment.
'That's the Meeting Desk,' he whispered. 'The Minister sits there.'
Dudley was about to retort, when he saw that the phone was ready. He went to Street View. 'You'll need to come up here to see it,' he said, tickled at his own devilment.
'I bloody won't!'
Dudley sighed, and when the image eventually appeared, he took a screen cap of it to show Seamus. He took great enjoyment from watching Seamus' scandalized expression as he leaped over a chair while dismounting the table.
Seamus' eyes narrowed. He stared at the picture on the phone screen. 'That's actually your house?'
'Nice, innit?'
Then Seamus grabbed Dudley's hand and the sick darkness took him over again. His vision returned to reveal that he was splayed flat out on the pavement. He managed to drag himself together, to find his key and to yell, 'Are you fucking nuts? Outside? This is where he wants me, he's gonna do me in out here!'
Dudley vomited as he dragged Seamus inside. Well, it was a variation on shitting on your own doorstep at least. He slammed the door shut and bolted it, before heading to the bathroom to be sick some more and then clean it up. He hoped Seamus would be putting the kettle on downstairs, and told himself never to wind up a wizard who was about to "Side Along" him again.
Seamus wasn't making tea. He was waving his stick at things. Dudley was too scared to snigger, although not so scared that he didn't recognise the double entendre.
"I'm just putting an Alarm Ward in,' Seamus said. 'We don't want to keep him out, after all, we want to catch him.'
'No, we want to keep him out.'
'And risk arresting him in the street and having to call out the Obliviation squad?' Seamus laughed.
Dudley had to ignore him because he was talking nonsense again. Dudley went into the kitchen to make his own tea. He had a good mind to just make the one for himself, but in the end his good manners won through and he made one for Seamus as well. When he took it through to him, Seamus was holding the letter box open and looking out through it. The scent of sick drifted into the house.
'I've got windows,' Dudley remarked. 'Though I would have thought your lot could have turned the walls into some sort of one-way glass or something.'
Seamus didn't answer, just handed a scrap of paper back to him.
Your back. I will get you now. Your boyfrend cant protect you. You scared yet?
Dudley's heart went into overdrive and his throat parched. His hand shook. He wondered what the fuck had happened to Piers, and whether it was going to happen to him.
'He can't spell,' Seamus observed, dropping the letterbox.
'I did notice that. Not sure it's the most important thing to observe about the note.' Dudley's voice was weak and wobbly, even as he tried for snark.
'Pretty poor school, was it, yours?'
'Minor Public, actually. Fairly expensive. Not bad.' His strength mustered as he channelled his father's snobbery.
'Entrance exam?'
'Of course.'
'And while you tortured this kid for three years, he was getting this expensive education, but nobody taught him the difference between your and you're, not to mention the 'i' in friend?'
'Maybe he was traumatised.'
'And maybe the notes aren't from him. How would he know you were at this address? Chester is a long way from Surrey. Where does Piers Polkiss live these days?'
'Erm. Chelsea.'
'Not quite so far from Little Whinging, but if your Slimer has got to him and garrotted him,' -Dudley clutched his throat- 'or whatever, then that's pretty organised for a man who's meant to be out of his mind. Why the quip about the boyfriend? I assume he means me.'
'He must have found out.' Dudley sank to the laminated floor. He wanted to be sick again, but there was nothing left to throw up.
'Found out what?'
Dudley's ring tone cut through the hush of the house. It made him jump a bit, but Seamus' reaction was hilarious. He was on his feet, shaking, and pointing his stick at Dudley's pocket in seconds. Dudley laughed at him before pulling out the phone. The laugh died and his blood ran cold, though, when he saw which phone was calling. His finger hovered over the screen.
'What the fuck is that thing doing?' Seamus screamed.
Dudley accepted the call. 'Piers?' he asked with trepidation.
'Yeah, mate. Yeah.'
Whatever Dudley had been expecting, it hadn't been that: Piers' voice calling from Piers' phone.
'Alright?' Dudley asked him, like they'd just walked into the same pub.
'Dunno mate. Listen.' Pier did sound a bit shaky now that Dudley was listening properly. Maybe Slimer had him tied up or something, maybe he was slicing off his ears to old soul music like in that movie. But then Dudley remembered that there had been a policeman on this number the last time he'd used it.
'Listen,' Piers said again. 'Slimer's topped himself. Left a detailed suicide note. I just spent a night at the police station, and this morning, answering questions. He's dropped us right in it. They'll be after you next.'
Nothing made any sense.
'Been having nightmares about this since he was locked up.'
'You never said.'
Piers barked a laugh. 'Well, we're not talkers are we, Big D? You never mentioned being a shirt-lifter until I caught you - well, you know...' Piers had walked in on Dudley sucking off the open-side flanker of the second fifteen in the junior cricket pavilion. He'd had such a thing for rugby players in those days. He preferred something a little less meaty now. Dudley became aware again of Seamus standing over him, twitching and waving his stick around.
Never mind that now. 'He's sending me notes. How can he be sending me notes if he's dead?'
'What notes?' Piers asked, at the same moment as Seamus squawked, 'Dead?'
Something else leapt to the front of Dudley's swirling mind. 'He can't spell.'
'Slimer? 'Course he can. Could. He won me that poetry prize, remember? The description of a rose petal decaying.'
Dudley vaguely remembered.
'I need to sleep. Look, I'm just ringing to warn you that the pigs are on to the speed franchise, the photos, and the fencing. I don't think I dropped you in it.' He paused. 'Ok, yeah, I might have dropped you in it a little bit. But the Bursar's silverware wasn't anything to do with me. Only Slimer didn't mention the war memorial thing, so don't you drop me in it about that.'
School felt so very long ago. Dudley was an upright citizen these days, he couldn't get done for that stuff now, could he? Well, almost upright, maybe a little slanted occasionally. The image of the open-side flanker's brown belly hair floated to the front of his mind. Then he realised that Piers had ended the call. He lowered his hand from where he'd been holding the phone against his ear. There was sweat all over the screen.
'Now will you tell me what the fuck that is?' Seamus asked, startling Dudley, who'd forgotten he was there.
'That was Piers,' Dudley said slowly, ordering his thoughts.
'I thought Piers was a person, not a rectangle of black plastic.'
Dudley looked down at his hand, at the iPhone which Seamus was still pointing his stick at. 'No, that's a phone. A telephone. You know? Piers just called me on it.'
Seamus still looked blank. This was going to take a while, Dudley realised, as he filled Seamus in on everything, starting with Alexander Graham Bell. As he talked, he shoved himself to his feet and started to make another pot of tea. Then bacon sandwiches.
'Are you sure you should be doing that?' Seamus asked when he'd finished. 'With you being on the run from the police and all?'
'You'll look after me,' Dudley replied.
'And why would I do that?'
'Harry told you to.'
'No, Harry told me to protect you from a crazed psychopath, not shelter you from Muggle justice.'
'Then you'll do it because with me down the nick you'll never find out who's sending those notes.'
Seamus shrugged. 'The Muggles can deal with that as well as I can.'
'Then you'll save me because you fancy me.'
There was a pause. A very long pause. Dudley had been expecting a laugh, or a slap; it had been a very long shot indeed.
Instead Seamus said, 'Well, there is that.'
Dudley was amazed. He looked into Seamus' face, to see whether he was joking, but he saw a very serious expression instead. Silent tension grew across the Formica. Their eyes met.
They both jumped at the rattle of the letter box.
'What the fuck?' Dudley's voice came out a lot higher than he would have hoped it would have done.
Payback time. You discust me. Not long to wate now.
'We do have a little time, then,' Seamus said slyly.
'Do the spells to keep him out! Do, them!' Dudley was only vaguely aware that the whimpering and shaking might put the wizard off him.
'There there.' Seamus patted Dudley's arm. 'We've just got to wait, it says, then we'll find out what's going on. At least you know it's not Slimer, eh? He finally finished the job you started in school. Now, can you think of any way we might occupy ourselves while we wait for the scrote to break in?'
'Look after me,' Dudley begged pathetically. He threw himself at Seamus' slight form.
The man was strong, though. His nice, tautly muscled arms held Dudley upright.
'There there,' he said again, stroking down Dudley's back. Lower and lower. 'Don't be scared. I'm here.' He slid his thumb into the soft fabric of Dudley's joggers, between his buttocks.
All of a sudden, Dudley wasn't scared anymore. He wouldn't have thought it possible, but he forgot all about the threat to his life. He was a simple man who'd always found it difficult to think of more than one thing at once.
'Would you have a bed upstairs?' Seamus asked, taking hold of a butt cheek in each hand and squeezing.
'Have we got time?' Dudley managed, but without really processing his own words.
'Sure. Sure we have. Will you be top or bottom? I'm easy either way.'
Dudley's last drops of blood fled his brain and filled his cock. He shoved it against Seamus' hard body, rubbing up and down.
Seamus pulled him towards the stairs and they were up them and naked so fast that Dudley might have thought it was magic if he hadn't done this a few times before. Instead of managing the impossibility of speech, he crawled straight onto the bed on all fours with his arse facing the wizard by way of an answer.
'Now isn't that a grand sight?' Seamus murmured just before Dudley felt slick fingers at his crack. It was only afterwards that he realised that here hadn't been time to find and open lube, so that must have actually been magic.
Dudley stroked himself as Seamus fingered him open. He twisted round to watch Seamus jerking off, too. The Irishman's pale face was burning pink now, his eyelids heavy, his breathing uneven. He put his prick to Dudley's entrance and Dudley suddenly remembered the condom. Seamus stared at it like he'd never seen one before (so it was a good job Dudley had remembered it, he realised afterwards) but he knelt still and allowed Dudley to roll it onto him.
'Now?' he asked.
'Now,' Dudley agreed.
He pushed in slow and gentle. Then he waited.
'Fuck me,' Dudley gasped. 'Fuck me hard.'
So Seamus did. Their flesh slapped together. Dudley felt like he was being made whole and torn apart. He pulled hard at his cock, hot and sticky in his hand. Seamus gripped his hips as he slammed in again and again and again.
Then the world went red as the joy shot pulses through Dudley. He heard Seamus crying out behind him. They both came hard then lay still. All of the tension had left Dudley's body. He looked at Seamus' serene face beside him and just concentrated on breathing deeply.
The peace was shattered by a siren. Dudley leaped up, but he was slower than Seamus who was out of the door before Dudley was on his feet. Crashing sounds came from his sitting room, so he crept cautiously down the stairs, wondering whether he had missed the noises of a window being broken or a door forced. When he peered out form the stairwell, he saw Seamus wrestling with a squat, beefy man who looked nothing like Slimer. Dudley had a quick check of his windows before spotting the stick which Seamus was wrenching out of the man's hand. So, the intruder was one of them! He must have magicked himself in.
Seamus pinned the man to the floor. He was still stark naked, and Dudley took advantage of the moment to admire the man's body. Then, remembering that he was also in the buff, he nipped upstairs for a towel, reluctantly doing the decent thing and picking one up for Seamus whilst he was there.
By the time he returned, Seamus had the man pinned to the floor. He muttered something and ropes snapped round the attacker's wrists and ankles. Now there was a spell for which Dudley could think of a few uses! Seamus stood up.
'Put it away, will yeh?' asked the man on the floor trying to twist his head to the side.
Seamus looked at himself and seemed surprised by his own nudity. However, he quickly focussed on the job in hand, saying crisply, 'Mundungus Fletcher, I'm arresting you on charges of threatening behaviour, Muggle-baiting and breaking into a building.'
'Nah, nah. You've got it all wrong. It's him what wants arresting.' He looked over at Dudley. 'Bloody 'ell, he's in a state of undress and all.'
Seamus remembered and gratefully took the towel from Dudley.
'When I called you boyfriends, it was supposed to be a wind-up, not a suggestion. I don't wanna know what you've been up to.'
Dudley hadn't been going to tell him, but if he didn't want to know, then: 'You see, the thing was that we were so unworried by your threats that we decided to have a shag while we waited.'
Seamus raised an eyebrow at him, then muttered, 'Last of the great romantics.'
Dudley remembered his manners. He looked into Seamus' eyes. 'And a bloody nice shag it was, too.'
Fletcher cried out, 'Auror Finnigan! Do you have any idea what sort of scum you've befouled yourself with?'
Seamus gave Dudley an assessing look. 'Pretty sure, yeah.'
'What have you got to do with Slimer, then? If you're a wizard?' Dudley asked Fletcher.
'Who or what is a slimer?'
'C'mon, now, Fletcher. Do you deny that you have been sending malicious notes to this Muggle?' Seamus asked, as professionally as he could in a skimpy lilac towel (Dudley had filched most of his house's contents from his parents').
'Deny it? Why would I deny it? I'm proud of what I done! If you was a true friend to Potter then you'd do the same. You certainly wouldn't be...' he searched for a respectable word 'fraternising.'
'You threatened a defenceless Muggle. Why?'
'I been inside,' Fletcher began, making himself as comfortable as possible given his bindings. 'Azkaban. Not the bad bit, mind, where they puts all the Dark one. I've always been in the Light, I have. Always was a member of the Order of the Phoenix. I helped out in the defeat of Voldemort in my own, small --'
'Get on with it.'
'I am, you see, Mr Finnigan, as indebted as any other right-thinking wizard to Mr Potter.'
'You were banged up for nicking his possessions and flogging them off.'
'And I feel terrible about that! I really do. I thought it were just Sirius' old stuff what he wasn't going to have any need for no more. Me and Sirius, we was mates, went way back--'
'We haven't got time for this,' Seamus warned.
'Anyway, I was stuck inside with time on me hands, a guilty conscience and a debt to pay to a hero, do you see? So I got to reading up about him. I studied our beloved Head Auror, searched through everything ever written about, trying to look out some small thing which I could do to help him in return.' He looked right into Seamus' face. 'Do you know what this bastard did to Potter when they was nippers?'
'S'a long time ago,' Dudley muttered. 'Water under the bridge.'
'Fletcher. It is not up to you to decide who Harry Potter can hold grudges against and who he can forgive. It was Harry who gave me the job of protecting Dudley.'
'He had to sleep in a cupboard! With spiders!'
'That wasn't me! Mum and Dad did that! I was only a child!'
'You beat him up! Regularly! You bullied all the other kids in the school out of making friends with him!'
'I was just doing what I was to! I grew up. I'm not like that anymore!'
'He saved you from the Dementors and what did you do for him in return?'
'I made him cups of tea.'
Seamus shushed them. A car was driving slowly down the road, looking for a place to park. Seamus looked quizzically at Dudley.
'That's a police car,' Dudley said, panic overtaking him again. He remembered in a rush everything which Piers had said on the phone. He was going to be questioned! He was going to be arrested!
'I'll leave you to it,' Seamus said. 'I need to get this one back to Headquarters for proper questioning anyway.'
And leave Dudley to face up to his past crimes? 'No!' Dudley flung himself at Seamus. 'Don't leave me! My hero. Take me with you.'
Seamus tried to back off but Dudley held him close.
'It doesn't work like that,' Seamus protested.
'Get a fuckin' room,' Fletcher complained from the floor.
Dudley clutched at Seamus. Seamus sighed in exasperation and rolled his eyes. He stroked a finger down Dudley's back and gave another, softer sigh. Then, in a single, swift movement, he ducked down, out of Dudley's grip, grabbed onto Fletcher's elbow and disappeared with a popping noise.
Dudley was devastated. He looked out of the window to see one of the police officers get out of the car and make towards his front door. He remembered the vomit on the doorstep. He remembered that he was naked but for a sunshine yellow towel decorated with daisies. Seamus had left him to face the police. Almost worse than that, Seamus had left him.
He dashed upstairs to grab his joggers. There was a cracking sound.
'I forgot my wand,' Seamus said, picking up the stick from the bedside table. 'And my clothes.' He grabbed up the pile at the foot of the bed.
There was sharp knock on the front door below them.
'And me,' Dudley said quietly, trying to sound soppy.
'I don't know.'
Dudley dropped his towel to the floor.
The doorbell rang.
Seamus said, 'Put your trousers on.'
They both made themselves decent as a voice called up through the letterbox, 'We know you're in there, Mr Dursley. It's the police. Come out or we'll break the door down,' then, more quietly, 'Christ, Sarg, it stinks of puke over here. I don't know what I'm kneeling in.'
Seamus stroked a finger down Dudley's bicep then wrapped two hands round it before starting to spin. Dudley felt the world fall away again and knew he was about to be sick, but this time he didn't care.
Author/Artist: ???
Prompt: 60: When Dudley is threatened by a guy he used to bully, who is now a psychopath on the run from the police, Dudley goes to Harry for help. Harry doesn’t turn his back to his cousin and sets one of the less good Aurors on the case, because you don’t have to be the best to fight a Muggle. That Auror turns out to be Seamus, who can’t keep his mouth shut. (Adult characters)
Pairing, or gen: Dudley/Seamus
Rating: NC-17
Warning(s): Bad swears, references to torture and bullying, explicit anal sex
Word count/medium: 6,000
Summary/Excerpt: ...'You're getting wizards mixed up with those super-heroes you lot've got splashed all over your comics and your picture houses. We do not exist in order to save your day.' Dudley has to find a reason why Seamus ought to protect him.
Author's or Artist's notes: Thanks to the mods for being awesome and patient and kind. Thanks to J & E for the betas, too. I wrote this in a hurry, all mistakes are mine and I apologise for them.
Disclaimer: Harry Potter and all associated characters and settings remain the intellectual property of JK Rowling and her associates. We are very grateful for permission to play with them.
Not Quite The Same As The Boys In Blue
Hand delivered. Through his letter box. Dudley's hand shook so much that the grubby scrap of paper fluttered against itself. It would have been unnerving enough on its own.
I got out. You scared yet? You shood be you cunt. I know were you live.
That morning he had received eight texts messages in rapid succession, all from Piers, all saying Call me or answer yr fucking phone, some with added insults and swear words. The last had just said: slimer. There were also fourteen missed calls logged from Piers. Dudley had been swimming. As he dried his hair, he'd pulled his phone from his shoe, turned the sound on, looked at the screen and begun to panic. Straight away, he phoned Piers back, to hear that sweet, irritating woman's voice say, 'It has not been possible to connect your call. Please try later or send a text.'
Piers hadn't answered later either, nor had he replied to any of Dudley's texts.
Slimer had been a greasy, skinny wimp in the year below them. Dudley could admit it now; they had gone too far with Slimer. Locking him in the gardener's shed overnight, pinning him down and forcing worms into his ears, hanging him by his wrists from the overhead pipes in the bathroom can't have been fun for the little maggot. He had been irresistible, though. He had whimpered so prettily and he never told. It kept the other squirts in line, seeing what got done to Slimer, and praying it wouldn't be done to them.
Only then he and Piers went too far. They set fire to the snivelling wanker's dressing gown when he was still in it and they waited just a little too long before chucking him in the biology pond. When they dragged him out, he was gibbering. It wasn't like they hadn't got him to sick bay straight away after that, but it had been too late.
The notice in Assembly had just been to say that he'd been sent home to recover. The TV news a week later had carried Slimer's school photo and it had turned out that he'd had a name and a little sister. Raymond Lewis Arrested for Bludgeoning Eight Year-Old Girl, had been the headline.
At the trial, the psychiatrist had talked a lot about 'persistent and extreme bullying', which had brought the school into disrepute. Smeltings had made much of reviewing and publishing their Bullying Policy, and training First Years about who to go crying to, but they had never investigated Slimer's own bullies. He and Piers had got away without punishment or condemnation.
Maybe that was when Dudley had started to ease up on that kind of thing. Or maybe it was a few weeks later when Harry had seen off the magical mist which had cried to him in many voices - several of them Slimer's. He had never given up pushing people around entirely; Dudley didn't expect anything less than exactly what he wanted and when people were reluctant to give him that, he wasn't above persuading them. He had eased off on the torture, though.
Slimer had been sentenced to an indefinite stay in one of those high security nutter prisons, Dudley had spent his year in hiding, and Piers had aced all his exams as well as getting top marks in the coursework by intimidating nerds into doing it for him. Piers was a banker now. Or had been up until Dudley had got out of the swimming pool. Dudley swam before and after every shift because free pool time was one of the perks of working for the gym. Well, the only perk unless you counted walking through the changing rooms in the hopes of catching a flash of bare buttock. Neither of which made up for being polite to underdressed, saggy, women who wanted to be fit, but hoped they could pay him to do the exercises for them.
Dudley looked out of his front window in Chester onto his street of tight-packed, tiny, terraced houses. It was well-lit by orange street lights which were just warming up as darkness fell. There was nobody out there, unless they were crouching behind a parked car. His heart rate sped even more, which he hadn't thought possible. Both sides of the road were lined with little cars, all parked as close to each other as they could get. Slimer was probably behind one of them. Dudley tried Piers' number again.
This time the call was answered. 'This is Police Sergeant Devlin speaking. Could I ask your name and your relationship to Mr Polkiss.'
Dudley only just managed to force words from his tight throat. 'Dudley Dursley. We were school friends. What's happened to Piers?'
'I'm afraid that information forms part of an ongoing police investigation which I am not at liberty to divulge.'
'I got a note. I don't feel safe. Help me.' He could hear that he sounded almost as scared as he felt.
They sent a couple of constables to his house and they sat on his futon in the sitting room drinking instant coffee while they took a statement. They put the scrap of paper in a clear plastic bag. Then they left, saying that someone would be in touch.
Someone would be in touch? When? After he was dead? After Slimer had pulled out each of his finger and toe nails individually and fed them down his cock, before slicing it off and choking Dudley with it? Dudley had always been very inventive about torture methods. He had always been the perpetrator, though. Now his imagination was able to supply him with all sorts of fucked up pain which Slimer could inflict on him and he didn't like it one bit.
'When?' he had asked the police officers.
'In due course', had been the unsatisfactory answer.
Dudley checked all the doors and all the windows. Then he paced. He closed all the curtains. He paced some more, made a cup of tea, didn't drink it. He got worried about what might be happening outside, so he opened all of the curtains again. He sweated. He kept away from the doors.
In the early hours, all of a sudden, he had had enough. He swore loudly and left the house, automatically checking his pockets for his phone, wallet, keys. He wished he had a car. He did have strong legs, though, and he knew how to run. He ran to the train station, but found it closed up for the night. While he ran, he had been tallying up his advantages and disadvantages, working out a system for bettering Slimer.
As he stood in the extreme quiet of early morning, bare arms raising goose-bumps, the sentence which kept drumming through his mind was, 'I have a cousin who could curse him...' He knew where the Magical part of Chester was. Nobody else he knew had noticed it, but then they didn't know what to look for. He'd spotted too many owls around there, behind the derelict cinema, and he knew that was how those weirdoes communicated. Dudley needed to get hold of an owl, and he needed to get a message to Harry. He set off running again.
He was exposed there, sitting on the doorstep of the Owl Post office, but somehow he felt safe. Most of them were safe in their beds, but he knew that anyone living round here had powers which Slimer could never overcome. Not that he had ever given the Wizarding World reason to save him. He just knew that the torments he had suffered at their hands had been dished out to him because he was a bully. Now that he was a victim, he trusted them to protect him as they had protected Harry. Or perhaps - it occurred to him - he was just calm because his mind had snapped already.
When he had first run into this street, he had felt a strong compulsion to turn back, a feeling that he ought to be elsewhere. Once he had realised that that was just what they wanted him to think, and he had started looking about him properly, he noticed all sorts of things. There were cauldrons piled high in a shop window, announcements about Quidditch matches, odd hats and brooms in the front gardens. Then there was this place: The Owl Post Office. He waited
The night fell away with no appearance from Slimer, and a hunched old bloke in a lilac dress opened up the shop from the inside. Dudley followed him in.
'I, er, don't really know how this works,' he started. 'But I want to send this letter to a wizard.' He had spent the night composing it.
'You're a Muggle,' the old guy said.
It was that obvious? Dudley didn't know whether to be flattered or insulted. He just nodded. He pulled some change out of his pocket.
The Postmaster viewed it suspiciously. 'I think we'll make this Pay On Receipt,' he said, 'I can't be bothered trudging up to Gringott's to change that lot. What was the name of the receiving wizard?'
'Harry Potter.'
It was as though Dudley had performed a spell himself. The old man's attitude transformed instantly.
'Sir should have said earlier. I am so sorry. No charge of course for Mr Potter. Do you know him well?'
'He's my cousin.'
'My goodness! Mr Potter's Muggle cousin! In my little shop. What an honour.' The man pulled a stick from his sleeve and Dudley was alarmed to find a fiercely stuffed floral armchair floating right at him over the counter of the shop. He ducked.
'Please, please take a seat. Do you wish to wait for the reply? I shall send this off to the Head Auror immediately.'
There was a flap and a squawk. Dudley tried not to flinch as an owl flew down from the ceiling. After all, he had been expecting to see one of the dratted birds since he had walked in. It was just because they had had so many descend on them that time his dad had been trying to keep Harry's letter from him, that was all. It had been frightening for an eleven year-old, even one as tough as Dudley had been.
Wait for the reply? Here? With all those birds and the freak customers? Well, Dudley didn't have anywhere else to go and he still felt oddly calm and safe.
Customers popped in and out of the shop all morning. Most of them did literally do that. There was a loud 'pop' and they just appeared. It made Dudley jump every time. Several of them brought him food, newspapers, cups of tea and sweets, though, once the Postmaster had told them who he was. He liked this kind of deference. He had always felt entitled to it. It was ironic, though, that it was his relationship to Harry which had brought it to him at last.
Owls constantly flew in through the windows at the back, and he would look up hopefully, then away again when the Postmaster shook his head. When the reply came, though, Harry didn't send an owl, he came in person.
There was another 'pop', Dudley flinched again, and then there he was: still scrawny and speccy with the same scruffy black hair. Dudley grinned. Harry gave him an exasperated sigh in return.
'I got your letter. This had better be important,' Harry said. 'I've got a full day planned.'
'My life is in danger.'
Harry sighed again. 'Isn't it your turn to save mine this time?'
Dudley shrugged and spread his palms. 'I'm only a poor defenceless Muggle.'
'Defenceless? I thought you were here because you'd tortured a man to insanity.'
Dudley hung his head in what he hoped looked like an apologetic manner.
'Come on, then.' Harry grabbed his arm.
Dudley started to stand, but Harry twisted round and suddenly the world fell away leaving Dudley's stomach in the Owl Post Office. Then they were indoors again, somewhere he didn't know, and Dudley landed on his arse, retching.
'Did you not give the man any warning?' asked a voice with an accent Dudley was too dizzy to place.
'I kind of forgot,' Harry replied.
Several laughs rang through the room then, and a glass of water was placed in his grip. Dudley sipped at it.
'Ok, Seamus, you're up to speed?'
'I would say so.'
'Right, we'll be going then. Ron, you'd best get your team to the Manor. The rest of us will raid Knockturn.'
The room was filled with a noise like the moment when all the party poppers go off. Dudley sipped before looking up to find himself in a high-ceilinged, wood-panelled room. The curtains were burgundy velvet to the floor, which was carpeted in a swirling green pattern. There was only one other man there. They looked at each other.
'So. Are we right then?' the man asked. Irish, that was the accent.
'Huh?'
'I've read that letter you sent Harry and he's given me a bit o' background on yer. I'm not afraid of you. My name's Seamus, by the way.'
'Where's Harry?'
'He's a very busy man, you know. Head of Department. He'll not waste his time on a case like this.'
'It's not a waste of time! My life's in danger!'
'Right you are. So. That's why he's put me on it, though it's more than you deserve if you ask me.'
Dudley hadn't and he didn't see why he ever would. 'I wanna talk to Harry.'
'Not happening. He's currently chasing up a Dark Coven full of unregistered Creatures. I would have been along, too, if it hadn't been for you, so I'm not best pleased with ya. You could at least be grateful.'
'He's doing what?'
'Well, he is the Head Auror. What did you think he'd be doing? Putting up Lost Kneazle posters?'
'He's the Head what?'
Seamus gave Dudley a pitying, exasperated look. 'It means he saves Wizardkind from evil on a daily basis. Which is "same old same old" as far as Harry's concerned, of course.'
'You're a Magic, though, right? And you'll look after me?' Dudley had given up on trying to understand what was going on, and decided to prioritise.
'I'm a wizard, sure.' Seamus pulled his magic stick out of his sleeve. 'I'm a fully trained Auror, too. Let's get on with this. So, ordinarily I'd be taking a statement from you, but I think your letter covers that. You tormented some poor kid until he broke and now want to avoid the revenge you've got coming to you-'
'I wouldn't put it like that-'
Seamus continued as though Dudley hadn't spoken: '-so all I need from you now is some idea as where you think the poor psychopath might be. Then we can start looking for him.'
No. Dudley stood up. 'Uh, no. I want to stay as far away from Slimer as possible. I just need you to protect me while I hide out until the police find him.'
Seamus laughed. 'Do you now? Well, I'm afraid that's not quite how it works. Sounds like me Mam was right about Muggles. See, this is the whole justification for the Secrecy Act. You all just want to make use of us for your own ends as soon as you find out about us. Well, I'm afraid you don't get your own pet wizard bodyguard big man, cousin of Harry Potter or not. And let me tell you, if you weren't related to the Chosen One, you'd have fuck all chance of getting anyone to take any notice of this problem of yours at all.'
'But I'm a victim! I'm in danger!' Dudley whined.
'You're getting wizards mixed up with those super-heroes you lot've got splashed all over your comics and your picture houses. We do not exist in order to save your day.' Seamus pulled a long white feather out of his other sleeve and then waved his stick about until a yellowed piece of paper appeared. He licked the less feathery end of the feather, then held it against the paper. 'This is a case. Your victim may have committed a crime and I've been charged with investigating that. Now, give me a clue where this Slimer might be hiding out so we can be getting on with this.'
Dudley was ashamed to hear his voice shake as he said, 'I think he's watching my house.'
'Splendid!' Seamus announced. 'Address?'
Dudley gave it, and Seamus wrote it down on the paper with the feather. Weird. It looked like quite normal messy handwriting, though.
'Do you have the Apparition co-ordinates for that?'
'Huh?'
'We'll have to use the Floo, then. You'll be on the Floo network?'
'Huh?'
'I'd need to be able to concentrate on your house if we were going to Apparate without co-ordinates. And I don't know what your house looks like.'
'Apparate?'
'Side-Along Apparition. It's the way you came here. With Harry.'
'I'm not doing that again!' Dudley decided to remember the name so he could avoid it in future. Side Along.
'How else do you propose we get from London to Chester? By Muggle transport? Your man Slimer could have slaughtered twelve football teams, got married and had baby Slimers by the time we got there. By the way, why do you call him Slimer?'
'When he started school he had these two long snot trails on his upper lip.' Dudley didn't care who else got killed as long as it wasn't him. He thought slowing down their approach on Slimer was a very good idea. 'Wait, what? We're in London? How did that happen?'
'And you thought that not wiping his nose was grounds for a prolonged program of persecution culminating in setting him on fire then nearly drowning him?'
'You never did anything stupid when you were young?' Dudley demanded defensively.
'Sure I was taunting Dark wizards into hitting me with unbearable pain when I was a schoolboy. The point is, how will we get to your house when I can't picture it?'
'Why don't you just use Street View on Google maps?' Dudley decided to ignore what he couldn't follow - which was a lot of what Seamus said.
It was Seamus who looked bamboozled now.
'Haven't you even got internet? How can you play at police when you don't even have internet?' Dudley pulled his phone out. Seamus flinched from it, then regarded it suspiciously. 'I just hope I can get signal on it or my 3G's useless. I don't expect this place to have anything as civilised as wireless.'
'I think there's one in the canteen, but I don't know how WWN's going to help.'
Dudley managed to get one bar. He went roaming around, near windows, then held it up in the air, finally achieving two bars by standing on a shiny table. 'That'll have to do, but it'll be bloody slow.' He tapped his address into Google maps. Then he looked over at Seamus while it loaded. Unexpectedly, Seamus was looking up at him with horrified astonishment.
'That's the Meeting Desk,' he whispered. 'The Minister sits there.'
Dudley was about to retort, when he saw that the phone was ready. He went to Street View. 'You'll need to come up here to see it,' he said, tickled at his own devilment.
'I bloody won't!'
Dudley sighed, and when the image eventually appeared, he took a screen cap of it to show Seamus. He took great enjoyment from watching Seamus' scandalized expression as he leaped over a chair while dismounting the table.
Seamus' eyes narrowed. He stared at the picture on the phone screen. 'That's actually your house?'
'Nice, innit?'
Then Seamus grabbed Dudley's hand and the sick darkness took him over again. His vision returned to reveal that he was splayed flat out on the pavement. He managed to drag himself together, to find his key and to yell, 'Are you fucking nuts? Outside? This is where he wants me, he's gonna do me in out here!'
Dudley vomited as he dragged Seamus inside. Well, it was a variation on shitting on your own doorstep at least. He slammed the door shut and bolted it, before heading to the bathroom to be sick some more and then clean it up. He hoped Seamus would be putting the kettle on downstairs, and told himself never to wind up a wizard who was about to "Side Along" him again.
Seamus wasn't making tea. He was waving his stick at things. Dudley was too scared to snigger, although not so scared that he didn't recognise the double entendre.
"I'm just putting an Alarm Ward in,' Seamus said. 'We don't want to keep him out, after all, we want to catch him.'
'No, we want to keep him out.'
'And risk arresting him in the street and having to call out the Obliviation squad?' Seamus laughed.
Dudley had to ignore him because he was talking nonsense again. Dudley went into the kitchen to make his own tea. He had a good mind to just make the one for himself, but in the end his good manners won through and he made one for Seamus as well. When he took it through to him, Seamus was holding the letter box open and looking out through it. The scent of sick drifted into the house.
'I've got windows,' Dudley remarked. 'Though I would have thought your lot could have turned the walls into some sort of one-way glass or something.'
Seamus didn't answer, just handed a scrap of paper back to him.
Your back. I will get you now. Your boyfrend cant protect you. You scared yet?
Dudley's heart went into overdrive and his throat parched. His hand shook. He wondered what the fuck had happened to Piers, and whether it was going to happen to him.
'He can't spell,' Seamus observed, dropping the letterbox.
'I did notice that. Not sure it's the most important thing to observe about the note.' Dudley's voice was weak and wobbly, even as he tried for snark.
'Pretty poor school, was it, yours?'
'Minor Public, actually. Fairly expensive. Not bad.' His strength mustered as he channelled his father's snobbery.
'Entrance exam?'
'Of course.'
'And while you tortured this kid for three years, he was getting this expensive education, but nobody taught him the difference between your and you're, not to mention the 'i' in friend?'
'Maybe he was traumatised.'
'And maybe the notes aren't from him. How would he know you were at this address? Chester is a long way from Surrey. Where does Piers Polkiss live these days?'
'Erm. Chelsea.'
'Not quite so far from Little Whinging, but if your Slimer has got to him and garrotted him,' -Dudley clutched his throat- 'or whatever, then that's pretty organised for a man who's meant to be out of his mind. Why the quip about the boyfriend? I assume he means me.'
'He must have found out.' Dudley sank to the laminated floor. He wanted to be sick again, but there was nothing left to throw up.
'Found out what?'
Dudley's ring tone cut through the hush of the house. It made him jump a bit, but Seamus' reaction was hilarious. He was on his feet, shaking, and pointing his stick at Dudley's pocket in seconds. Dudley laughed at him before pulling out the phone. The laugh died and his blood ran cold, though, when he saw which phone was calling. His finger hovered over the screen.
'What the fuck is that thing doing?' Seamus screamed.
Dudley accepted the call. 'Piers?' he asked with trepidation.
'Yeah, mate. Yeah.'
Whatever Dudley had been expecting, it hadn't been that: Piers' voice calling from Piers' phone.
'Alright?' Dudley asked him, like they'd just walked into the same pub.
'Dunno mate. Listen.' Pier did sound a bit shaky now that Dudley was listening properly. Maybe Slimer had him tied up or something, maybe he was slicing off his ears to old soul music like in that movie. But then Dudley remembered that there had been a policeman on this number the last time he'd used it.
'Listen,' Piers said again. 'Slimer's topped himself. Left a detailed suicide note. I just spent a night at the police station, and this morning, answering questions. He's dropped us right in it. They'll be after you next.'
Nothing made any sense.
'Been having nightmares about this since he was locked up.'
'You never said.'
Piers barked a laugh. 'Well, we're not talkers are we, Big D? You never mentioned being a shirt-lifter until I caught you - well, you know...' Piers had walked in on Dudley sucking off the open-side flanker of the second fifteen in the junior cricket pavilion. He'd had such a thing for rugby players in those days. He preferred something a little less meaty now. Dudley became aware again of Seamus standing over him, twitching and waving his stick around.
Never mind that now. 'He's sending me notes. How can he be sending me notes if he's dead?'
'What notes?' Piers asked, at the same moment as Seamus squawked, 'Dead?'
Something else leapt to the front of Dudley's swirling mind. 'He can't spell.'
'Slimer? 'Course he can. Could. He won me that poetry prize, remember? The description of a rose petal decaying.'
Dudley vaguely remembered.
'I need to sleep. Look, I'm just ringing to warn you that the pigs are on to the speed franchise, the photos, and the fencing. I don't think I dropped you in it.' He paused. 'Ok, yeah, I might have dropped you in it a little bit. But the Bursar's silverware wasn't anything to do with me. Only Slimer didn't mention the war memorial thing, so don't you drop me in it about that.'
School felt so very long ago. Dudley was an upright citizen these days, he couldn't get done for that stuff now, could he? Well, almost upright, maybe a little slanted occasionally. The image of the open-side flanker's brown belly hair floated to the front of his mind. Then he realised that Piers had ended the call. He lowered his hand from where he'd been holding the phone against his ear. There was sweat all over the screen.
'Now will you tell me what the fuck that is?' Seamus asked, startling Dudley, who'd forgotten he was there.
'That was Piers,' Dudley said slowly, ordering his thoughts.
'I thought Piers was a person, not a rectangle of black plastic.'
Dudley looked down at his hand, at the iPhone which Seamus was still pointing his stick at. 'No, that's a phone. A telephone. You know? Piers just called me on it.'
Seamus still looked blank. This was going to take a while, Dudley realised, as he filled Seamus in on everything, starting with Alexander Graham Bell. As he talked, he shoved himself to his feet and started to make another pot of tea. Then bacon sandwiches.
'Are you sure you should be doing that?' Seamus asked when he'd finished. 'With you being on the run from the police and all?'
'You'll look after me,' Dudley replied.
'And why would I do that?'
'Harry told you to.'
'No, Harry told me to protect you from a crazed psychopath, not shelter you from Muggle justice.'
'Then you'll do it because with me down the nick you'll never find out who's sending those notes.'
Seamus shrugged. 'The Muggles can deal with that as well as I can.'
'Then you'll save me because you fancy me.'
There was a pause. A very long pause. Dudley had been expecting a laugh, or a slap; it had been a very long shot indeed.
Instead Seamus said, 'Well, there is that.'
Dudley was amazed. He looked into Seamus' face, to see whether he was joking, but he saw a very serious expression instead. Silent tension grew across the Formica. Their eyes met.
They both jumped at the rattle of the letter box.
'What the fuck?' Dudley's voice came out a lot higher than he would have hoped it would have done.
Payback time. You discust me. Not long to wate now.
'We do have a little time, then,' Seamus said slyly.
'Do the spells to keep him out! Do, them!' Dudley was only vaguely aware that the whimpering and shaking might put the wizard off him.
'There there.' Seamus patted Dudley's arm. 'We've just got to wait, it says, then we'll find out what's going on. At least you know it's not Slimer, eh? He finally finished the job you started in school. Now, can you think of any way we might occupy ourselves while we wait for the scrote to break in?'
'Look after me,' Dudley begged pathetically. He threw himself at Seamus' slight form.
The man was strong, though. His nice, tautly muscled arms held Dudley upright.
'There there,' he said again, stroking down Dudley's back. Lower and lower. 'Don't be scared. I'm here.' He slid his thumb into the soft fabric of Dudley's joggers, between his buttocks.
All of a sudden, Dudley wasn't scared anymore. He wouldn't have thought it possible, but he forgot all about the threat to his life. He was a simple man who'd always found it difficult to think of more than one thing at once.
'Would you have a bed upstairs?' Seamus asked, taking hold of a butt cheek in each hand and squeezing.
'Have we got time?' Dudley managed, but without really processing his own words.
'Sure. Sure we have. Will you be top or bottom? I'm easy either way.'
Dudley's last drops of blood fled his brain and filled his cock. He shoved it against Seamus' hard body, rubbing up and down.
Seamus pulled him towards the stairs and they were up them and naked so fast that Dudley might have thought it was magic if he hadn't done this a few times before. Instead of managing the impossibility of speech, he crawled straight onto the bed on all fours with his arse facing the wizard by way of an answer.
'Now isn't that a grand sight?' Seamus murmured just before Dudley felt slick fingers at his crack. It was only afterwards that he realised that here hadn't been time to find and open lube, so that must have actually been magic.
Dudley stroked himself as Seamus fingered him open. He twisted round to watch Seamus jerking off, too. The Irishman's pale face was burning pink now, his eyelids heavy, his breathing uneven. He put his prick to Dudley's entrance and Dudley suddenly remembered the condom. Seamus stared at it like he'd never seen one before (so it was a good job Dudley had remembered it, he realised afterwards) but he knelt still and allowed Dudley to roll it onto him.
'Now?' he asked.
'Now,' Dudley agreed.
He pushed in slow and gentle. Then he waited.
'Fuck me,' Dudley gasped. 'Fuck me hard.'
So Seamus did. Their flesh slapped together. Dudley felt like he was being made whole and torn apart. He pulled hard at his cock, hot and sticky in his hand. Seamus gripped his hips as he slammed in again and again and again.
Then the world went red as the joy shot pulses through Dudley. He heard Seamus crying out behind him. They both came hard then lay still. All of the tension had left Dudley's body. He looked at Seamus' serene face beside him and just concentrated on breathing deeply.
The peace was shattered by a siren. Dudley leaped up, but he was slower than Seamus who was out of the door before Dudley was on his feet. Crashing sounds came from his sitting room, so he crept cautiously down the stairs, wondering whether he had missed the noises of a window being broken or a door forced. When he peered out form the stairwell, he saw Seamus wrestling with a squat, beefy man who looked nothing like Slimer. Dudley had a quick check of his windows before spotting the stick which Seamus was wrenching out of the man's hand. So, the intruder was one of them! He must have magicked himself in.
Seamus pinned the man to the floor. He was still stark naked, and Dudley took advantage of the moment to admire the man's body. Then, remembering that he was also in the buff, he nipped upstairs for a towel, reluctantly doing the decent thing and picking one up for Seamus whilst he was there.
By the time he returned, Seamus had the man pinned to the floor. He muttered something and ropes snapped round the attacker's wrists and ankles. Now there was a spell for which Dudley could think of a few uses! Seamus stood up.
'Put it away, will yeh?' asked the man on the floor trying to twist his head to the side.
Seamus looked at himself and seemed surprised by his own nudity. However, he quickly focussed on the job in hand, saying crisply, 'Mundungus Fletcher, I'm arresting you on charges of threatening behaviour, Muggle-baiting and breaking into a building.'
'Nah, nah. You've got it all wrong. It's him what wants arresting.' He looked over at Dudley. 'Bloody 'ell, he's in a state of undress and all.'
Seamus remembered and gratefully took the towel from Dudley.
'When I called you boyfriends, it was supposed to be a wind-up, not a suggestion. I don't wanna know what you've been up to.'
Dudley hadn't been going to tell him, but if he didn't want to know, then: 'You see, the thing was that we were so unworried by your threats that we decided to have a shag while we waited.'
Seamus raised an eyebrow at him, then muttered, 'Last of the great romantics.'
Dudley remembered his manners. He looked into Seamus' eyes. 'And a bloody nice shag it was, too.'
Fletcher cried out, 'Auror Finnigan! Do you have any idea what sort of scum you've befouled yourself with?'
Seamus gave Dudley an assessing look. 'Pretty sure, yeah.'
'What have you got to do with Slimer, then? If you're a wizard?' Dudley asked Fletcher.
'Who or what is a slimer?'
'C'mon, now, Fletcher. Do you deny that you have been sending malicious notes to this Muggle?' Seamus asked, as professionally as he could in a skimpy lilac towel (Dudley had filched most of his house's contents from his parents').
'Deny it? Why would I deny it? I'm proud of what I done! If you was a true friend to Potter then you'd do the same. You certainly wouldn't be...' he searched for a respectable word 'fraternising.'
'You threatened a defenceless Muggle. Why?'
'I been inside,' Fletcher began, making himself as comfortable as possible given his bindings. 'Azkaban. Not the bad bit, mind, where they puts all the Dark one. I've always been in the Light, I have. Always was a member of the Order of the Phoenix. I helped out in the defeat of Voldemort in my own, small --'
'Get on with it.'
'I am, you see, Mr Finnigan, as indebted as any other right-thinking wizard to Mr Potter.'
'You were banged up for nicking his possessions and flogging them off.'
'And I feel terrible about that! I really do. I thought it were just Sirius' old stuff what he wasn't going to have any need for no more. Me and Sirius, we was mates, went way back--'
'We haven't got time for this,' Seamus warned.
'Anyway, I was stuck inside with time on me hands, a guilty conscience and a debt to pay to a hero, do you see? So I got to reading up about him. I studied our beloved Head Auror, searched through everything ever written about, trying to look out some small thing which I could do to help him in return.' He looked right into Seamus' face. 'Do you know what this bastard did to Potter when they was nippers?'
'S'a long time ago,' Dudley muttered. 'Water under the bridge.'
'Fletcher. It is not up to you to decide who Harry Potter can hold grudges against and who he can forgive. It was Harry who gave me the job of protecting Dudley.'
'He had to sleep in a cupboard! With spiders!'
'That wasn't me! Mum and Dad did that! I was only a child!'
'You beat him up! Regularly! You bullied all the other kids in the school out of making friends with him!'
'I was just doing what I was to! I grew up. I'm not like that anymore!'
'He saved you from the Dementors and what did you do for him in return?'
'I made him cups of tea.'
Seamus shushed them. A car was driving slowly down the road, looking for a place to park. Seamus looked quizzically at Dudley.
'That's a police car,' Dudley said, panic overtaking him again. He remembered in a rush everything which Piers had said on the phone. He was going to be questioned! He was going to be arrested!
'I'll leave you to it,' Seamus said. 'I need to get this one back to Headquarters for proper questioning anyway.'
And leave Dudley to face up to his past crimes? 'No!' Dudley flung himself at Seamus. 'Don't leave me! My hero. Take me with you.'
Seamus tried to back off but Dudley held him close.
'It doesn't work like that,' Seamus protested.
'Get a fuckin' room,' Fletcher complained from the floor.
Dudley clutched at Seamus. Seamus sighed in exasperation and rolled his eyes. He stroked a finger down Dudley's back and gave another, softer sigh. Then, in a single, swift movement, he ducked down, out of Dudley's grip, grabbed onto Fletcher's elbow and disappeared with a popping noise.
Dudley was devastated. He looked out of the window to see one of the police officers get out of the car and make towards his front door. He remembered the vomit on the doorstep. He remembered that he was naked but for a sunshine yellow towel decorated with daisies. Seamus had left him to face the police. Almost worse than that, Seamus had left him.
He dashed upstairs to grab his joggers. There was a cracking sound.
'I forgot my wand,' Seamus said, picking up the stick from the bedside table. 'And my clothes.' He grabbed up the pile at the foot of the bed.
There was sharp knock on the front door below them.
'And me,' Dudley said quietly, trying to sound soppy.
'I don't know.'
Dudley dropped his towel to the floor.
The doorbell rang.
Seamus said, 'Put your trousers on.'
They both made themselves decent as a voice called up through the letterbox, 'We know you're in there, Mr Dursley. It's the police. Come out or we'll break the door down,' then, more quietly, 'Christ, Sarg, it stinks of puke over here. I don't know what I'm kneeling in.'
Seamus stroked a finger down Dudley's bicep then wrapped two hands round it before starting to spin. Dudley felt the world fall away again and knew he was about to be sick, but this time he didn't care.