The scene around me was frozen in macabre clarity, and my mind was racing a million miles an hour while simultaneously feeling like it was stuck in molasses.
In front of me stood Dudley. Or what used to be Dudley. His head was... not there anymore. Neither was his arm. Blood sprayed in jagged arcs across the room, staining the wallpaper and pooling on the linoleum.
For a moment, my mind refused to accept what my eyes were seeing. "Wait, what?" I muttered, my voice trembling.
Did I do that? How? Why? I didn't do that. Did I?
My gaze flicked around the room, as if expecting someone else to jump out and claim responsibility. Nope, just me. And pieces of Dudley.
"Oh, look, that's his eye," I mumbled, my stomach churning as I noticed it resting a few feet away. "And how is he still standing? Is he a chicken or something? No, wait, I can't move. Oh, right—I'm in shock. That's great. Fantastic."
A deep, primal part of my brain was screaming at me to snap out of it, but the rest of me was just stuck in a looping thought: What the hell just happened?
Dudley swayed like a felled tree, and in slow motion, he began to topple over. As he hit the ground with a wet thud, I knew that sound would haunt me forever.
And then, the nausea came. I bent double, heaving uncontrollably.
"Fuck. Why did he die? That wasn't part of the plan! That wasn't even a possibility I considered!"
The barrier was supposed to protect him, wasn't it? I mean, it had deflected a dart before. Did the barrier not stop magic? Or was it because it was my magic that it didn't work?
The questions swirled in my head like a hurricane, but one thought rose above them all: I am so, so screwed.
Vernon was going to kill me. Not figuratively. Literally. And there wouldn't even be enough of me left for a funeral.
But then, a darker, sharper thought sliced through the chaos: Let the wizards clean this up.
They wanted me so badly, didn't they? Fine. Let them deal with this mess. Let them figure out how to explain a headless, armless kid to the police. Let them deal with Vernon. They wouldn't be able to bring Dudley back, so now what? What would they even do?
I wasn't waiting around to find out.
"Move, Harry," I muttered to myself, my voice shaky but firm. "You can't just stand here."
I had some supplies hidden in my cupboard. Food, a bit of money, enough to get out of here and avoid Vernon's wrath for a little while. It wasn't much, but it was better than staying here.
As I turned to leave, something white caught my eye. Instinctively, I bent down and picked it up.
It was the other eyeball.
"Oh, come on!" I groaned, the bile rising in my throat again. "What the hell is wrong with me?"
Adrenaline was coursing through my veins, making my limbs feel shaky but alive. People say fight or flight kicks in during situations like this. Me? Apparently, I lose several IQ points and start picking up disembodied eyeballs. Fantastic.
Focus, Harry. Focus.
I dashed to the cupboard, grabbing my stash in frantic handfuls. Bread, some coins, an old can of beans. It wasn't much, but it was all I had.
While doing so I noticed I was still holding the eyeball in my hand. I dropped it immediately into my hole, wiping my hand on my shirt in disgust.
My hands were trembling as I shoved everything else into a bag. "I'm out of here," I whispered, as if saying it aloud would make it more real.
I cast one last glance at the room, at Dudley's lifeless body sprawled across the floor, at the blood that painted everything like a nightmare.
Then I turned and bolted.
The clinking of cutlery against plates filled the kitchen, a symphony of mundane domesticity. I sat quietly at the table, my head low as I picked at my toast. Across from me, Vernon was slicing into a sausage, the sound of his knife grating against the plate like nails on a chalkboard. Petunia poured tea with mechanical precision, and Dudley sat with an almost unnatural stillness.
I chewed, the blandness of the toast doing little to distract him from the heavy atmosphere. As usual, I expected an outburst at any moment—some petty excuse for Vernon to turn purple with rage.
And right on cue, Vernon's eyes landed on myself. The vein in his temple twitched, his fork clattered against the plate, and his face turned a shade of crimson that rivaled raw meat.
"BOY, I—" Vernon started, his voice like thunder rolling across the kitchen.
But then... nothing.
His jaw worked soundlessly for a moment, and then, as if the storm clouds had suddenly dissipated, he deflated. His face returned to its usual ruddy complexion, and he let out a grunt, picking up his fork and continuing to eat as if nothing had happened.
I blinked, the toast halfway to his mouth. "What the...?" I muttered under my breath.
Across the table, Dudley reached for the butter. "Harry, could you pass that, please?"
The words hit me like a train. Dudley. Dudley Dursley. The boy who had spent the better part of his life tormenting me, asking for something. And saying please.
"Uh... sure," I said, handing the butter over with an almost robotic movement. I watched Dudley closely, noting how my cousin wasn't shoveling food into his mouth like a starved animal. Instead, he was taking small, measured bites, his posture straighter than I ever remembered.
And now that I thought about it... Dudley seemed thinner. Not by much, but enough to notice.
"What's going on?" I thought, glancing between the Dursleys.
Petunia looked... different, too. Her usual pinched expression was still there, but it lacked the sharp edge that made her look like she'd been sucking on a lemon. And Vernon, who normally relished every opportunity to berate me, had gone completely silent again.
It wasn't just them. The house felt different. Like it had been scrubbed clean of some invisible grime Harry hadn't realized was there until it was gone.
This wasn't the first time I'd noticed it, either. Over the past week, little things had started to stand out. Dudley hadn't tripped me in the hallway once. Petunia had left a biscuit on the plate with tea yesterday, which felt like winning the lottery. And Vernon had started to erupt at least three times, only to stop halfway through, his anger dissolving into muttered grumbles.
Something had changed.
I frowned, my toast forgotten. I didn't know what had caused it, but it was as if the household had been... reset. Or maybe tilted ever so slightly, like the world was just a few degrees off its usual axis.
I couldn't shake the feeling that Dudley was the biggest anomaly. He seemed... quieter. Politer. Almost reflective, in a way I couldn't remember ever associating with his cousin.
And yet, I just couldn't figure out why.
I finished his breakfast in silence, letting the mystery churn in my mind like a puzzle I didn't have all the pieces for. Whatever had happened, it had seeped into every corner of the Dursley household, reshaping it in ways I couldn't yet grasp.
Something had changed.
I sat cross-legged in my cupboard, staring at the peeling paint on the walls. The air was still, thick with the faint smell of dust and wood polish. For the first time in a while, I felt a strange sense of peace—or at least, what passed for peace in this house. The Dursleys were quieter these days, less inclined to shout or hit. It was unnerving, but also a relief.
I leaned back, letting my head thump lightly against the wall, when my foot brushed against a slightly raised floorboard. My curiosity piqued, I sat up and prodded it with my toe. The board wobbled.
"A loose floorboard?" I muttered, leaning down to pry it up with my fingers. Beneath it was a small hollow space I hadn't thought about in ages. Memories flickered—this had been my hiding spot as a child, a place to keep the few treasures I had managed to hoard.
I reached inside, my fingers brushing against something smooth and round. Frowning, I pulled it out, and my heart stuttered.
It was an eyeball.
The white orb stared back at me, cloudy and unseeing, but undeniably human. My hand trembled, and the memory hit me like a freight train.
The kitchen. The blood. Dudley's lifeless body crumpling to the ground.
"Oh my God," I whispered, my voice barely audible.
I remembered everything. The fight with Dudley. The knife. The surge of magic that had ripped him apart in a gruesome spectacle. The panic that had consumed me as I ran, the adrenaline masking the horror of what I'd done.
And then... nothing.
My mind raced, trying to bridge the gap between that night and now. My heart pounded in my chest as I thought back to the boy who had been sitting across from me at breakfast, eating politely and asking me to pass the butter.
"If I killed Dudley..." I whispered, the words catching in my throat. "Who was that?"
The realization sent a chill down my spine. The boy wasn't Dudley. He couldn't be.
"They must have replaced him," I muttered, my voice shaking. "They found someone, some random child, and... did something to make him look like Dudley. Is that why everyone's been acting so weird?"
The more I thought about it, the more it made sense. Vernon and Petunia's unusual calm, their subdued behavior. The boy's politeness, his lack of Dudley's usual brutishness.
"Are we all under compulsions this time?" I asked myself, my voice barely above a whisper. The thought sent a shiver through me.
My hand tightened around the eyeball as the reality of the situation sank in. These wizards—the ones who had engineered all of this—they weren't just powerful. They were terrifyingly ruthless. They had replaced Dudley and bent everyone's behavior to their will, all to keep me in line.
"I can't fight them," I thought, the weight of that realization pressing down on me like a physical force. "If they're willing to go this far... I can't risk provoking them again."
The Dursleys left me alone now, and that was more than I could have hoped for. If the compulsions were what kept Vernon from raging and Petunia from screaming, then I'd live with it.
I slid the floorboard back into place, tucking the eyeball into the hollow space. My heart still hammered in my chest, but my mind was set.
"I just have to endure this," I thought. "Until I get to the magical school. Then maybe I'll have a chance to understand what's happening. Until then... I'll stay quiet."
I leaned back against the wall, my breathing finally steadying. Whatever had happened, I was alive. And for now, that was enough.