A Meeting From the Past
By Misha

Disclaimer- Everything belongs to J.K. Rowling and is not mine, however much I might wish differently. However, I am not making any money off of this, so please do not sue me!

Author's Notes- This is sort of strange. It focuses on Harry and Dudley. Basically, the two meet up again after many years and have an interesting conversation. I make Dudley a decent guy, because I believe that almost any character can be redeemed. Besides, it's fun to try. This is sappy and sentimental, sorry, that's the kind of mood I'm in. Well, that's all, enjoy!

Pairing- Minor Harry/Hermione, Dudley/Other.

Summery- After many years, Harry runs into Dudley and learns that people really do change.

Spoilers- All four books.

Rating- PG.

Hermione shot her husband a warning glance. "Don't whine. And I told you, I wanted to look for some stuff for the baby."

Harry made a face. "But do we have to do it in Muggle London? I mean there are lot's of nice baby clothes shops in the wizarding world, there's no need to start shopping with the Muggles and where these uncomfortable clothes."

"You know, you're starting to sound like Draco." Hermione pointed out dryly.

Harry laughed. "Well, he is one of my best friends. Besides, he has a point, there are many flaws to being around Muggles. Mainly, you can't act like yourself and that sucks."

Hermione just smiled and grabbed her husband's hand. "Come on, I see a store I want to check out."

With a sigh, Harry allowed Hermione to drag him into the store.

"You know, I still don't get what this store has that Diagon Alley or Hogsmede, doesn't."

Hermione rolled her eyes. "Harry, I just want to buy the baby a few Muggle things for when I take her to see my family, they are Muggles, remember?"

Harry sighed. "I guess you're right."

"You know, from listening to you, no one would ever believe you were Muggle-born." Hermione said as they entered the shop, careful to keep her voice low.

"That's because I'm not." Harry pointed out. "I might have been raised by Muggles, which did not exactly endear them to me, but my father was a pure-blood and my mother, though she had Muggle parents, was actually from a long line of wizards and witches."

Hermione laughed. "True. Forgive me, sometimes I forget that I'm married to the only known direct descendant of all four Hogwarts founders."

Harry laughed and wrapped his arm around Hermione as they began to look at baby clothes.

"This is cute." Harry said, picking out a soft pink and white sleeper.

Hermione smiled and held out a delicate pale blue lace dress. "It is. What do you think of this?"

"I like it." Harry said, placing one hand on his wife's extended belly. "And I think she will too."

The couple shared an intimate smile and continued browsing through the shelves. After a while, they had picked out what they had wanted and went to the cash.

Right in front of them was another young woman, obviously pregnant.

"Is this your first baby?" Hermione asked her with a smile.

The young woman, a pretty thing with curly black hair, smiled. "Yes, is it yours?"

"Yes." Hermione answered. "Do you know what you're having?"

The woman shook her head. "No, we chose not to find out. You?"

"A girl." Hermione said with a bright smile.

The woman paid for her purchases and then it was Hermione's turn. Harry paid for their purchases with the Muggle money he and Hermione had gotten earlier, while Hermione continued her conversation.

"I'm Hermione and this is Harry." Hermione introduced, motioning to herself and then Harry.

"I'm Emily." The other woman said, then she looked at her watch. "I have to meet my husband for lunch in a few minutes, why don't you two join us? I'm sure my husband would love to meet you, besides this way he can actually have a conversation that revolves around something other than the baby. I'm afraid that's all I talk about any more."

"Me too." Hermione confessed with a grin, then she looked at Harry. "What do you say?"

Harry shrugged. "Whatever you want to do is fine with me."

Hermione smiled and turned to Emily. "We'd love to join you."

Emily beamed. "Oh, that's wonderful. Come on, we're meeting him at the restaurant just across the street."

The three of them left the shop and headed to the restaurant. Emily's husband wasn't there yet, but she suggested that they sit down and wait for him.

"He probably got caught up at work." She explained. "He runs a clinic that helps treat obesity. He works mainly with children."

Hermione smiled. "That seems like a worthy profession."

Emily beamed proudly. "Oh it is, he really wants to help people."

"What do you do?" Harry asked politely.

"Well, when I'm not pregnant, I'm a counsellor at the clinic. It's how we met." Emily explained. "What about you?"

Harry and Hermione exchanged looks.

"I'm a teacher." Hermione answered, which was true, Hermione had taken over teaching Charms at Hogwarts when Professor Flitwick retired.

"And I'm in politics." Harry explained. "Very low down, I work behind the scenes."

It was as close he could come to telling the truth, which was that he had a high up position at the Ministry of Magic.

"Oh, that sounds nice." Emily said. "How did you two meet and have you been married long?"

"We've been married for three years." Hermione told her with a smile. "And we met at school, why, it must have been thirteen years ago."

Harry smiled. "Doesn't seem like it, does it?"

"So you were school sweethearts?" Emily asked curiously.

Harry and Hermione both nodded.

"That's so sweet." She said with a smile. "Sorry, I'm asking so many questions. My husband always tells me that I'm too nosy."

"It's alright, we don't mind." Hermione assured her.

Emily smiled again and then her entire face lit up.

"Oh, there's my husband now!" She exclaimed, waving her hand in the air let him know where she was.

Harry turned to see a tall, husky man approach them. He looked vaguely familiar, but Harry couldn't remember where he had seen him before.

"Hey sweetheart." He said as he joined them. "Who are your friends?"

Emily smiled as he sat down next to her. "This is Harry and Hermione, I met them in the baby store and invited them along, so that you could have intelligent conversations while we women talked about babies."

The man let out a low laugh. "Sounds good to me." He said and then turned to look at Harry and Hermione.

His face went white as he stared at Harry.

"Harry?" He asked in disbelief. "Is that you?"

Harry looked at him for a moment and then he gasped.

"Dudley?" He asked in disbelief, unable to believe it. This was his cousin?

He hadn't seen Dudley since the summer before his fifth year, which had been more than seven years earlier. Still, he remembered what his cousin looked like and boy had he changed. The man in front of him was charming and good looking, while still fairly heavy, he was nothing like the giant ball of fat that Harry remembered.

"Do you two know each other?" Emily asked curiously.

"This is my cousin." Dudley told his wife with a smile. "Though, we haven't seen each other in years."

"This is your cousin? The one who lived with you?"

Dudley nodded.

Emily beamed. "That's wonderful!" She turned to Harry. "What an amazing coincidence. My husband has been trying to find you for the last three years."

Harry raised an eyebrow in disbelief. "Really?"

"Really." Dudley told him quietly. "A lot's changed, Harry."

Harry was still skeptical.

"I see we have a lot to talk about." Dudley said, he glanced at Emily and Hermione. "Why don't you and I go for a walk, while the girls enjoy lunch?"

Harry looked at Hermione, who nodded encouragingly, and sighed.

"Alright." He said standing up. Dudley did the same and the two of them left the restaurant.

"You look very different than what I remember." Harry commented dryly.

"I imagine that I do." Dudley told him. "I am different."

Harry did say anything, instead he changed the subject.

"How are Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia?"

"Dad's dead." Dudley told him matter-of-factly. "He died the year after you left."

"I'm sorry." Harry said, though he wasn't sure that he was. His Uncle Vernon had never been anything other than cruel and abusive to him.

"Then you're more generous than I am." Dudley said bluntly. "I know how he treated you, and now I realize just how wrong that was. How badly we all treated you."

Harry was stunned. Lot's of strange things had happened in his life, but he counted this one as really strange. He had never imagined one of the Dursley's actually apologising for how they treated him.

"How about Aunt Petunia, how's she doing?" Harry asked after a moment.

Dudley smiled. "Good. She remarried a couple of years back. He's a good chap."

Harry nodded. "That's good."

He didn't have any real fondness for his aunt, but she was his mother's only sister and that meant something, he guessed.

"I hear you run a Centre that treats obesity." He commented.

Dudley smiled. "Yeah. Well, who better than me? I mean, remember how I was when I was young? I want to help other people like that."

"That's a good cause." Harry commented. "And Emily seems very nice."

"She is." Dudley said, smiling again. "She's the best, too good for me, really. I don't know what I ever did to deserve her."

"I feel that way about Hermione." Harry said softly.

"Does she know about you?" Dudley asked.

Harry nodded. "Yes. She's a witch, I met her when I started at Hogwarts."

He looked to see if Dudley flinched at the mention of the word "Hogwarts", but he didn't.

"I've over come a lot of my prejudices." Dudley explained with a smile, seeing the way Harry looked at him. "Emily helped."

"Oh?" Harry asked curiously.

"Yes, believe it or not, two of her brothers are wizards." Dudley said. "Emily's not, but when we got married, she told me about her brothers, just in case any of our children were and I told her that I had a cousin who was a wizard."

"Interesting." Harry said. "What's Emily's maiden name?"

"Creevy." Dudley answered.

Harry laughed, unable to believe it. "You're kidding right?"

Dudley looked puzzled. "No, why?"

"One of her brothers is "Creepy Creevy"." Harry said, still laughing.

Dudley looked even more confused.

"Emily's brother, Collin, used to follow me around everywhere." Harry explained. "So that was the nickname we came up for him."

"That was you?" Dudley asked, shaking his head. "Emily mentioned that her brother used to worship this one boy, one who was apparently really famous, but she didn't remember his name. Of course, I never told her your's."

Harry shook his head at the unbelievable coincidence. It was just all so weird.

"Collin eventually outgrew it." He commented. "But for a long time, he was really irritating."

Dudley shook his head again. Then for a moment, there was silence.

"What happened after you stopped living with us?" Dudley asked finally.

"Well, I went to live with my godfather when he was cleared." Harry said after a moment. "The war had just started and things got intense pretty quickly. There were a lot of expectations for me to live up to."

"War?" Dudley asked curiously.

"There was an evil wizard who wanted to wipe the world of anyone who wasn't a pure blood wizard and I was the only one who had ever gone up against him and survived." Harry said flatly. "Because of that, there was a lot of pressure for me to be the one to end the war."

Dudley shook his head in amazement. "Wow. It just seems so weird. And shows how little we knew you."

"It was a long time ago." Harry said quietly.

"What happened?"

"I did what I had to do." Harry said flatly. "In the end, I fought Voldemort and survived. There were a lot of sacrifices, though."

"Did you ever consider running away?" Dudley asked. "I mean, that's what I would have done if it was me."

"No." Harry said flatly. "I couldn't. Not when I was all that they had. Besides, I wanted revenge for my parent's deaths."

"He...?" Dudley trailed off. "I'm sorry."

"So am I." Harry said quietly. "I offer wonder what life would have been like if they had lived."

"Probably a whole lot happier for you." Dudley said. "After all, your life with us wasn't a happy one, was it?"

"No." Harry said bluntly. "It wasn't."

"Harry, I want you to know how much I regret those years." Dudley told him. "When Dad died, I was forced to re-evaluate lot of things and I finally realized how awful I was back then. I'm ashamed of those years and what I was like."

"That shows you've really changed." Harry said softly. "I mean, I can see that you're not the Dudley I remember."

"Some people manage to get better with age and I was lucky." Dudley told him.

"I'm glad we had this talk." Harry said, noticing that they were once again approaching the restaurant.

"So am I." Dudley told him. "There was so much I wanted to say to you."

"It doesn't make those years better." Harry told him. "But, I guess it's closure in a way."

Dudley nodded. "So your life is a good one?"

"It is." Harry told him as they entered the restaurant. "Hermione and our baby are everything to me."

"That's how I feel about Emily." Dudley told him as they approached the table where their wives sat.

"All done?" Harry asked Hermione.

She nodded. "We were just waiting for you to come back. Ready to go?"

Harry nodded and Hermione stood up.

"It was nice meeting you." Hermione told Emily.

Emily smiled. "You too."

Harry turned to Dudley. "Good luck and thanks."

"You too." Dudley told him. "And, Harry..."

"Yeah?"

"Thank you for listening."

Harry just nodded and then he and Hermione left. Neither of them spoke until a little while later when they apparated home.

"What did Dudley say?" Hermione asked softly.

Harry took her in his arms. "He told me he was sorry for how he and his parents treated me."

"That's good, isn't it?" Hermione asked.

"It is." Harry told her. "It's a little too late, but, well I never thought that it would come at all."

Hermione didn't say anything.

"He's not the way I remembered." Harry commented softly. "He's changed a lot and I'm glad. I'm glad I saw him. Now that part of my life is officially over."

"And the rest has just begun." Hermione reminded him softly.

Harry smiled. "Yes it has. Our life together."

He leaned down and kissed her softly, his mind fully on the present, the past nothing but a distant memory.

The End