"The Road to Roundabout" (Dudley, Harry)

[friendshipmods]

Author: wemyss
Prompt/Prompt Author: "Dudley's not such a bad guy, after all", by lamerezouille
Title: The Road to Roundabout
Characters: Dudley, Harry, Hermione, Millicent, Ron, Teddy, Draco, Arthur, Albus, Scorpius, and the usual cast
Rating: BBFC12/12A
Warnings: Antiquities; antiquities (non-Roman); British humour; cricket; gardening; ghosts; hauntings; nasty

Comments

[mage_girl]

This was amazing.

I enjoyed every word and the part with the two trees in the woods...and the promise made...and Harry later on taking care of business...

oh, my heart.

Dudley here is wonderful. I can very much see him doing this, living a wonderful life filled with neighbors and gardening and pints.

Thank you!

K.

Thank you.

[wemyss]

(I apologise in advance to all commenters if that damned semi[-]colon continues to append itself to all replies. I'm not typing the damned thing: it's apparently feral.)

I can't imagine a reformed Dudley in any other fashion - partly I suppose because I cannot imagine a life bereft of pints and herbaceous borders and the dawn chorus, I admit.

I'm very glad you liked it.

[germankitty]

Before reading, even -- SQUEE!!!

*hurries to read*

--several hours later --

Absolutely lovely. I adore your Dudley, and love the fact that not only he, but his family gets to play a role in which an older Harry once more gets to play centre-stage, will he-nil he.

Speaking of which, wonderfully done to involve yet another generation, with Artful!

Oh, and one more thing "I should like to assure readers that Dogmersfield, Thundry Pond notwithstanding, was named by the Saxons for its water-lilies, not for any Dagmar."

Leave me out of this, please? :-)

I'm implausibly fond of Artful.

[wemyss]

And of you, not least for yr too great kindness. (And I shall leave you out of local Surrey topography, I promise.)

Dud seems to me a man who requires space and peace and family: all the things Privet Drive never gave.

[therealsnape]

A marvellous read, and one to revisit. The voices of your characters, be they retired Army officers or simple country folk, are a triumph. As is this version of likeable Dudley. There's only one downside: whenever I read a post-war Dudley story from now on, I may think it a decent one, but a little voice will say, "Well, what actually happened to Dudley, of course, is that he turned into this useful countryman who knows his onions (and dahlias and salvia)..."

And all the various nodges to canon (Dudley working for meals on wheels without overturning any old ladies, Draco remaining perfectly-IC on the whole marriage thing - it's your spare but my heir *grin*, Teddy resembling his father) were a delight.

Cheri/Bellatrix? Had me laughing out loud.

Great story!

Thank you.

[wemyss]

Lamentably, I find myself vy limited in not being able readily to conceive Dud and the rest in any other way, myself: wh not infrequently shows through, I think.

You're very kind to say such nice (and undeserved) things.

It was the mods wot won it.

[wemyss]

Thank you for making it possible, and for yr vy great kindness.

[kellychambliss]

What an excellent, clever, beautifully-written and characterized story. "Load every rift with ore," Keats said, and the rifts here are positively brimming. Well done.

Stylistically and conceptually, this story reminds me of another favorite of mine from this fest, "And It Could Be Me, and It Could Be Thee." I'm guessing the same author for both (though I'm much more often wrong than right in my fic guesses).

The number of quotable lines and insights exceeds my ability to list them all, so I'll merely say "thank you" for this linguistic and historical delight of a fic.

How vy kind of you to say so.

[wemyss]

I'm so pleased you liked it so well. (And, yes, well spotted on the guess.)