Harry had never believed he would meet a boy he hated more than Dudley, but that was

before he met Draco Malfoy.

Dudley had always known that Harry belonged to him.

The certainty had been with him all his life. His parents had given him everything in the

house. His toys, his air rifle, his two rooms, his stack of presents every birthday and

Christmas, his television, his computer games and of course, the child in the cupboard he

could take out and play with.

Harry was the best of his possessions, because he hated being Dudley's possession. Dudley

had always wanted that extra kick, that extra present, something to make it better.

The flash of absolute hatred in those green eyes was it. It was an acknowledgement that he

was owned, imprisoned, a pet and a toy and absolutely at Dudley's mercy. It was good.

Quiet, withdrawn little Harry never felt that depth of emotion for anyone else. It was all

Dudley's.

Dudley made sure it stayed that way.

His gang knew that they had to keep Harry apart from everyone, torment Harry to within an

inch of his life.

To see Harry looking alone and miserable, too frail in Dudley's own cast-offs, to hear Harry

thumping against the cupboard door, to eat anything that Harry would have liked to eat.

To watch Harry lying on the ground, bleeding from a split lip, and see his eyes narrow as he

hissed, "I hate you!"

I hate you.

Green eyes and red blood and hatred more vivid than both.

Oh yes. That was the kick.

He had Harry. Every day in the house, there were a thousand little fights Dudley always won

with his weight advantage - and that was an extra pleasure, the very physical difference

between them because thin, black-haired Harry couldn't have been more unlike his parents'

adored little boy - and a thousand furious glares which warmed Dudley through and through.

Harry belonged to him with every heated hate-filled stare, and always would.

Dudley knew that Harry had powers. He'd seen Harry jump and find himself on the roof of

the school kitchens once, he'd seen that snake get loose and snap right at Dudley.

The racing of his blood after that had woken Dudley up at nights. Because it just made Harry

more his possession, that fury at Dudley could make things like that happen.

Dudley might be going to Smeltings, but Harry would still be at home for the holidays. Harry

would still be in his power. Nobody would ever have more power over Harry than he did.

Dudley held onto that through all the strange, stupid things. Even after that mad giant broke

into their hut. No matter what school Harry went to, he was Dudley's creature. He wasn't

getting away.

Dudley saw to that. In the month after the giant's appearance, he had acted out terror of

Harry, smirking through his parents' arms as he always did, making sure Harry knew he was

isolated and hated.

Forever.

And he was always rewarded with that narrow-eyed glare, I cannot imagine ever hating

anyone more than I hate you, and then he was content.

*

The summer after Harry's first year at that freak school only gave Dudley a hint there was

something going wrong.

The hatred was still there then. He could make needling references to Harry having no friends

at that mad place, and Harry would be vulnerable and hurt and he would glare.

Oh, but it wasn't the same! There was a lack of depth in that stare. There wasn't all the

emotion, all the hatred, that there could possibly be.

Dudley knew something had changed, but he didn't know what it was.

All he knew was that when Harry was locked up in his room, hungry and desperate and

unhappy, Dudley would sit outside the door and listen to him cry. Every time his parents

thought about letting Harry out for the sake of caution, he urged them not to. Then he drank

in the soft desperate sobs, and he was able to think - I did that. He's mine.

And it still wasn't enough.

When Harry escaped, Dudley vowed, next summer, next summer, he wasn't getting away.

Next summer it was even worse.

Harry barely noticed him. He was getting letters now, he definitely had friends and he was

more self-confident but Dudley could have dealt with that, that wasn't the hatred...

Sometimes when Harry looked at him, there was the flicker of that heat, that fury, and then -

Harry seemed to be looking through Dudley. Looking at someone else, someone worse.

And the heat was all for him.

Dudley could not bear that.

So he had to resort to desperate measures. He found out where Harry kept his letters, he distracted Harry in the middle of writing his letters, he tried to get a picture of this stupid place and the name of this rival.

He stumbled on things like Voldemort, but even though Dudley knew very little he could see it wasn't that. Harry didn't discuss that name with the same personal hatred, that fire that comes from detesting even the tiny petty everyday actions of a person, from loathing every molecule of their being.

And then he found the name. It was in the round scrappy handwriting of that person who always signed himself Ron, and it was a casual throwaway comment. But there was dislike there, and there was something else that made the hair prickle on the back of Dudley's neck.Malfoy.

It meant something. He went through all the letters from Ron, found references to the name

again, and to 'dear old Draco' in scathing comments.

Draco Malfoy.

A weird name, a freak's name, and one of those people at that stupid place thought he could

casually scoop up something which had belonged to Dudley all his life.

One day he saw the name in one of the letters Harry was writing. On the very first line, the

thing he wanted to talk about more than anything else.

Dudley wasn't stupid. He could see that much.

'I don't want to talk about Malfoy.'

That absolute hatred. The open honesty of Harry's direct green glare. Hatred, and it was for

someone else.

Dudley couldn't guess what this person had done. Had a bigger gang to torment Harry, hit

him harder, thought of more ways to torment him, used magic? What could he possibly have

done to make a lifetime of torture less important to Harry?

He was a faceless, remorseless opponent. And from all that Dudley could glean, he hadn't

done much.

Small acts of petty dislike were all that people mentioned. Nothing Dudley hadn't done a

hundred times over, none of the best things –

Harry's mouth bleeding as he glared up at Dudley –

But he had to have done something. He had to have some secret. If Dudley could figure that

much out...

Meanwhile, whenever Harry glared at him he was glaring past him, and Dudley wasn't even

there. Draco Malfoy and Harry were the only people in the room, and Harry's hatred was so

thick Dudley could taste it, but he couldn't have it.

In the end, Dudley had felt viciously jealous of Aunt Marge, because Harry had seen her, had

cared enough to attack her. When she had been deflated, he wanted to attack her. But his

anger wasn't really for her.

It was for him.

Dudley ate even more than usual next year, mad unstoppable eating, as if he could spite

Harry with every mouthful, because he had a plan.

And it worked. Next summer, the diet was declared, and skinny fragile Harry was condemned

to table scraps. Dudley could visualise those eyes in that thin pale face, growing brighter with

hatred as he grew hungrier.

Beat that, Draco Malfoy.

Except Harry didn't even seem to notice. Nothing Dudley could do got through to him

momentarily, and even those glares he won shifted from Harry's contemplation of Dudley to

that constant ghost.

The summer after that, after Harry's fourth year, had been even worse.

There had been no glares. Nothing Dudley could do provoked him at all. Harry was scared of

something, and it wasn't a rival, it was something bigger and not on a personal level and that

was all right, listening outside Harry's room to hear the cries he woke up with was good...

but.

But Dudley gathered from Ron's letters that there had been some incident on the train. This

Malfoy person had provoked everybody on some train - had provoked Harry - into attacking.

Nothing Dudley could do got through to him, but Malfoy had gotten to him.

How was he doing it? What was his secret?

Dudley had to know. But he couldn't find out, and he didn't get through, and nothing

happened that summer except his own frustration growing hotter and hotter, longing fed

throughout night after night outside Harry's bedroom waiting for a tiny unsatisfying cry of

distress.

Longing for just one more drop of blood and hatred.

*

The summer after Harry's fifth year was just the same. Harry was even more withdrawn,

untouchable. He was pale and preoccupied and there was never ever any heat in his eyes.

He never even woke up crying at night. He was tougher than that now.

It was unendurable.

Dudley could only take out that name, Draco Malfoy, and curse it, and assure himself that

Harry was unhappy.

But it hardly seemed to matter. Dudley wasn't the one making him unhappy. And in the

deepest watches of the night, lying awake, that was all that seemed to matter.

If he couldn't get to him, Harry wasn't caged. Harry wasn't his.

The deepest watches of the night.

Like one night in late August, when he was lying awake and he heard the soft sound of

someone sliding the bolts of the door open. He was out of bed in a second, of course. If it was

Harry, he could deliver him into the hands of his parents at once, he could get him into such

trouble and then surely Harry would be furious...

Dudley came padding softly down the steps to the open front door, where he could see

Harry's thin figure in too-large pyjamas, outlined against the night.

Where he could see three silhouettes on the porch.

And he was just about to go running for his parents when Harry's voice came cutting through

the air, alive at last and like blood and hatred and everything Dudley had been dying for.

"What the hell are you doing here, Malfoy!"

Dudley wasn't moving after that. Not an inch. Not when the ghost was about to made flesh,

the secret about to be revealed and Harry was about to be in his power once more.

Three silhouettes on the porch, and Dudley crept closer.

A girl with bushy hair, clearly Hermione of the compulsively neat script, and a redhaired boy

with a good-humoured expression. Ron of the cheerful scraps.

So the boy leaning lazily against the doorframe...

Draco Malfoy.

He wasn't what Dudley had been expecting. Somebody huge, who could crush Harry and

laugh as the blood flowed, not someone as pale and slim as Harry himself and strangely...

beautiful.

Beauty was not something Dudley had factored into his calculations. He wondered what it

had to do with anything, that the boy's hair was like soft moonlight and his face was narrow

and aristocratic.

He suspected that the boy's presence, an arrogant overwhelming and utterly vibrant presence,

had a lot to do with things. But it still couldn't account for - that. That absolute, searing,

locked gaze which meant there was no-one else in the room, that blistering heat and that...

God, yes. Hatred.

"Nice pyjamas, Potter," the boy sneered.

And Harry was that vulnerable defiant boy who was supposed to belong to Dudley, crossing

his arms defensively over his chest, caring again. Glaring again.

"What's he doing here?" he demanded of the other two.

They spoke at once. Dudley wouldn't have bothered if he was them. It was clear from one

look at Harry's intent furious face that he wasn't listening, wasn't even really aware of them.

"It's complicated, Harry, you'll have to trust us-"

"We'll explain later, but now Dumbledore needs us and we have to go-"

"I know it sounds stupid, but he's on our side-"

"He's working with us. Dumbledore needs us all now, we have to co-operate and-"

It meant nothing to Dudley. But that fixed gaze did, that meant almost everything, and he

came just a little further down the steps to see it and...

"What is that?" said the cutting voice.

Draco Malfoy. And he was coming face to face with his enemy at last.

But of course the boy didn't understand. Chilly grey eyes swept over Dudley with a look of

utter disdain, and then dismissed him and returned to Harry.

"That's my cousin," Harry said tightly, barely glancing back.

"It's a relative?"

He wasn't even doing anything very much! And there the hatred was, hot and consuming and

all for him, and it wasn't fair...

"Muggles aren't objects," Harry said, which meant less than nothing, but his tone...

"Whatever, Potter. Like I care."

Harry's whole body was drawn tight as a bowstring. Dudley watched those taut tense lines

covertly, covetously.

"Like I'm supposed to believe you're on my side."

"Oh, I assure you I'll never be on your side."

Draco Malfoy's voice was soft and sharp as a knife stroking Harry's face. And the gathering

together of Harry's shoulders was... oh, indescribable.

There it was. The secret. The reason this boy could take what was Dudley's, win all that

hatred, he was using it at this very moment and Dudley could see the effect and...

He still had no idea what it was.

The boy took a step closer to Harry. Harry lifted his chin, face open and honest and blazing.

"But I'm not on his side," he whispered coldly.

"And why should I believe that?"

"Because-" The boy looked over, and one corner of his thin mouth curled. "Not in front of the

Muggle, Potter. Come with us and I'll tell you."

Harry stepped forward again, coming nose to nose with Draco Malfoy.

"And what will you tell me?" he demanded.

The boy was unfazed. "Everything. What else?"

Harry made decisions fast when he was angry, every synapse snapping like the fire behind his

eyes.

"Right then," he said. "Come on. Let's go."

He strode towards the door.

"Er, Harry-"

The girl called Hermione and the Malfoy boy were looking mildly amused.

"You might want to get dressed, Potter."

Harry went dark red, and then made a dash for the stairs.

Dudley heard his own voice, whining and impotent. "You can't go anywhere. Mum and Dad

will-"

"They won't care," Harry snapped, barely looking at him.

"If I tell them-"

"Oh for God's sake," said Draco Malfoy. Dudley looked at him and saw him lifting some kind

of stick in his hand, heard the nonsensical words - "Petrificus Totalus" - and felt...

Cold enveloping him, freezing him and making him topple to the ground. Winter paralysing

him, having him, winter as implacable as the icy look on his rival's face and as pitiless as a

life without Harry or hatred.

He lay there on his side, absolutely convinced that the blood would not begin running in his

veins again and restore him to life and motion unless Harry looked at him with that fire of

hatred again...

The front door shut behind them.

*

The summer after Harry's sixth year was different again. For the first time, Dudley worked

out that this would be Harry's last summer in Privet Drive. That Harry was not shackled as

Dudley had planned, that he could and would escape and Dudley still hadn't found out the

secret...

Harry was different too. Even more distant, on a personal level.

As if something was preoccupying him. On a personal level.

Dudley had to break through that reserve somehow. So he tried the only way he could think

of.

He swaggered up to Harry one day and said,

"So those freaks were your friends?"

Harry was staring at something Dudley couldn't see. "Yeah," was all he said, in disinterested

tones.

"That Draco Malfoy character?"

At the mention of the name, Dudley saw Harry tense up. The disinterest was suddenly an

unconvincing mask. And his gaze focused, intensified.

He was still looking at something Dudley couldn't see. But Dudley knew who it was.

"What about him?" Harry said sharply. Then, after a moment, he told the obvious lie. "I don't

want to talk about him."

"Is he your friend?"

"Yes. No. I don't know," Harry answered, tumbling the words together. Not even talking to

Dudley anymore. He stood up to go, and said under his breath, "I don't know what he is."

That night Dudley listened outside Harry's door once again.

There were soft sounds, sheets rustling, quickened breathing. And then at last there was that

name, bewildered and raw, like the sound of that old childish crying.

Dudley thought it was a new kind of hatred.

*

Dudley recognised the Hermione girl's handwriting even when it came by the ordinary post.

He had come to realise that their weirdo owl post might be watched sometimes, and Hermione's letters meant something special. Harry always looked apprehensive when he got one.

When he read this one, he went ashen.

Dudley loved and loathed that look, the sick winded pain in Harry's face unbelievably sweet

but the suspicion rising at once.

This has something to do with him.

Dudley listened for it, that irrepressible fragment slipping from Harry's lips.

"He wouldn't - he can't."

"What are you whispering about, boy?" Dudley's Dad snapped.

"Nothing, Uncle Vernon," Harry replied instantly. "I - um. Can I be excused?"

Of course, he couldn't be. But he sat there looking at his food with a sort of horror, as if he

would vomit if he was forced to eat any. And once Uncle Vernon got up, he bolted out of the

room.

That frightened look on his face. God, what was this secret, what had this boy done?

Dudley waited for what he judged to be the right amount of time, and then reminded his

mother that Harry should be doing the washing-up. Once she dragged Harry out of his room,

Dudley crept in and found the letter.

Harry's writing was a spiky mess.

'Come and see me. Tonight. I want to know what the hell you think you're doing. You're not

stupid and you have to know that - I mean - you have to know how dangerous

Just come and see me. You have to. If you don't, I'll go to Malfoy Manor. I swear I will. I

don't care what happens.

Draco, you'

That was all he'd written. That was enough. That was too much.

Dudley hid himself behind his mother's prize rosebushes that night. It was already starting to

rain when Harry and Draco appeared from the front of the house.

There he was again. The rival. The enemy.

Blond hair like silk pushed off his face, the first trail of rain hitting one side of his porcelain

flawless cheek.

And Harry, heated imperfect human Harry, staring at him with a ferocity that burned Dudley

through and through in the pouring rain.

They were already talking.

"-spying, Draco, have you lost your mind? You know what happened to Snape! You can't

possibly risk it-"

Desperation edging Harry's voice, sharp and savage as a blade. And there was that life, and

hatred, and that secret... and Dudley still didn't know what it could be.

"I have to! There's nobody else they could possibly believe!"

"You know what they did to Snape!" Harry's hands, suddenly clutching at the other boy's

arms, and Dudley was reminded of how he used to fight back in the playground. His voice

was dark. "I won't let you do it."

"I really don't see how it's any of your business."

Dudley didn't understand the words. They didn't matter. What mattered were the tones, that

blackness laced with the intoxicating red of hatred and the white knuckles of Harry's hands as

he held on...

The blond boy tried to wrench out of his grasp, and Harry hung on stubbornly. And it was

raining heavily and they were fighting and yelling at each other, Draco's face for once open

and distraught as Harry's, and Dudley felt a hot pulse of excitement as he realised that Harry

was crying.

Ohhh, hatred.

"Let me go!" He was trying to twist out of Harry's grasp and Harry, mouth set and miserable

as a child's, wouldn't let go, and this was all feral and yes, absolutely, hatred...

"I won't! I won't do it!"

And they overbalanced, or slipped in the mud, and suddenly Draco was on his back on the

stone steps of the patio, and it must have hurt like hell but he didn't seem to care, his eyes

were wide and grey and bleak and he was snarling.

"Why do you even care!"

Still trying to get away, and they were scrambling and shoving and struggling and Harry's

heavy wet hair was in Draco's face and then...

Harry touched Draco's face. And the gesture was all wrong, incongruent, and Draco stilled

under his touch as Dudley stilled behind the rosebushes.

"You know why," Harry was saying in a low rapid voice. "You know why, Draco, you

know..."

There was stillness for a moment, and then - motion again, frantic desperate motion, lips and

hands and heaving and... hatred?

Harry's mouth was red and swollen, and there was blood there but not spilled, and Draco's

thin body was arching and...

The utter utter lack of heat for him froze Dudley, left him staring and so cold in that chill

garden in this night storm, because he finally understood the secret and it was so horribly

simple.

All he could do was watch as Harry buried his face in the rain-slicked smoothness of Draco's

throat, and murmured words that had nothing to do with hatred.

Finis