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Destiny by The Ravenclaw Sheerio

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Maybe it was because Cho Chang was his fiancée now. No, that couldn't be it, because Cho was Harry's ex, and he imagined that would be awkward to both Harry and the woman he was marrying, which he believed was the sister of those kids who crashed through his chimney and made his tongue swell with their candies that time. He really hoped he wouldn't run into the one that was still around at the wedding. He had heard that one of them had died in the war from Cho when she came back and they began their relationship, meeting up again in a Muggle coffee shop, quite unintentionally, but destiny was destiny, and they needed each other. Cho was recovering from a war, and Dudley was trying to figure out where his life was going after he had moved out of the house, after he and his father began to think less and less of each other, fighting so much sometimes that Petunia would run to her bedroom, sobbing, unaccustomed to the two, who had been so close in the past, fighting. When he learned he had proposed to a witch, Vernon's contact with Dudley had become less and less frequent, which was actually fine by him.

He wondered if he should accept the invitation. He had contacted Harry from time to time, but he would hardly call it friendship. He received a Christmas card every year from Harry, showing him and the pretty red haired woman he assumed was his bride, sometimes a tall man with the same hair color and a tiny woman with curly hair who, as of last year, seemed to be expecting by the photo on the card. Cho would always proudly display the cards on the refrigerator in the flat they sprung for when they became engaged with the Ministry of Magic magnets she would receive from her mother. It still left him in awe on some days that he was going to be married to a witch when October rolled around. But when Cho would turn around to smile at him after putting up such cards, all surprise would fade away. Witch or not, she would no doubt be the one for him.

When he had received a letter by owl, he had not been surprised. Cho did come from a wizarding family, after all. He was surprised, however, when he saw it was addressed to him. And when he saw the black and pink lace surrounding the thick paper inside, he thought he might fall out on the steps. His cousin, the one he had bullied, shamed, and belittled their entire childhood, was getting married and was forgiving enough to invite him.

Molly and Arthur Weasley invite you to witness the marriage of their daughter,
Ginevra Molly Weasley, to Harry James Potter,
on July 1,
at the Burrow, on the outskirts of Ottery St. Catchpole, Devon, England.

A note in the back was scrawled messily and had a stain of food on it. He squinted to read it.

Please send a reply letter with the owl if you plan on attending. If you wish to bring him inside, he responds to the name Pigwidgeon and is very old, so he probably needs you to feed him a little something in order for him to come back to me alive. Seriously, he's a twenty year old owl. PLEASE FEED HIM.
Signed, Ronald Weasley

The owl, looking quite tired indeed, looked up at Dudley expectantly. He sighed and went to find a biscuit from his dinner the night before. The owl, almost tiny enough for the biscuit to weigh him down, caught it in his mouth. With the owl now satisfied, and his owner, as well, Dudley went to find Cho.

"Cho?" he called.

"Yes?" she called back.

"We have a letter from Harry Potter. An invitation."

"To what?"

"To his-" he paused, still marveling that he was invited. He gulped and finished.

"To his wedding."

"Oh, wonderful! Harry and Ginny are getting married!"

He inwardly sighed. Cho obviously didn't think about how he might have treated Harry when they were children.

"Meet me downstairs. I'll make us some tea."

Later, with her shiny black hair wet and half-brushed, wearing pajamas and a cotton robe, Cho came downstairs with a steaming teacup awaiting her. She sat down next to him.

"Dudley," she said, "you look a bit pale. Are you all right?"

He looked up at her and nodded weakly as the owl, having devoured the biscuit, flew over to her. She stroked the feathers on its head.

"What's wrong, Dudley?" she asked.

"Cho, I... I don't think I should go to the wedding. I don't really think that Harry would want us there."

"Why not?" she asked.

"No, he wouldn't want me there. I wasn't very nice to him, when we were children. I called him names, beat him up a few times..."

"But he invited you."

"Probably because his future father-in-law loves Muggles." He was surprised at how many wizarding words slipped out of his mouth since he began living with Cho.

"Dudley," she said, "we're going to the wedding. We have to."

And, at her word, he grabbed a pen and a piece of stationary, though reluctantly, and carefully wrote his response.

On July, 1, Dudley looked up directions to Ottery St. Catchpole, Devon, England, and he and Cho searched the closet for the nicest possible, most wedding appropriate clothes they owned. Cho eventually found a blue cotton dress and Dudley found the suit his father gave him for his eighteenth birthday years ago. Though he didn't like to wear it much, due to the memory of that rare look of disapproval on his father's face and the tweed material that made his arms itch, it was the nicest thing he had.

With Cho holding the printed directions, they then stepped out to the car, feeling the warmth of the summer sun on their skin.

"It's a beautiful day for a wedding," Cho said.

Despite the nervousness he still felt at the thought of the wedding, he agreed. He could see the red haired woman from the cards in a white dress, a bouquet of summer flowers in her hands tied with white ribbon, his cousin, still short and skinny but with a bit of facial hair, sporting his lightning scar, as always, waiting for her, smiling. The thought calmed him a bit, hoping that Harry would smile at him, too.

After almost two hours of Cho reading him the directions and a sign officially announcing their arrival in Devon, she stopped him at a little rundown place that looked like a farmhouse.

"This must be it," she said.

The place appeared to have caught fire at one point, black spots surrounding the white exterior. There was also a tent with red and white balloons tied to it that made him believe that this was, indeed, where the wedding would take place.

A cardboard sign instructed them to come inside the building to wait.

They got out of the car, Cho more readily than Dudley. For a while, he felt the urge to get sick in the nearby bushes. Cho turned around to look at him. "Dudley?" she asked. "Aren't you getting out?"

He swallowed hard. "Yeah," he said.

She smiled as he got out to walk with her and squeezed his hand.

When they walked through the doors, he found the little house filled with enough people for claustrophobia to kick in. Most of them had hair in varying shades of red, the bride's family, he guessed, and others looked nothing like any of the others, probably Hogwarts students. A group of women in silky red dresses stood off to the side, one tall, blonde, and nearly physically flawless with a nearly identical daughter in a flower girl dress at her feet, one with darker blonde hair and eerie gray eyes that seemed to follow almost all of them around the room, and the brunette woman from the cards, now with a baby girl who resembled both her and the tall redheaded man greatly. She shushed the baby as she began to squirm.

"Rose, hush..."

With a tickle in his throat that he didn't know was nausea, laughter, or unpleasant nostalgia, he saw one of the twins that made his tongue swell with their strange sweets. His stomach churned when he realized he was missing an ear.

The fellytone man approached him, as well as a little boy with black hair and green eyes greatly resembling Harry's, though they didn't seem to be related. "Hello!" the man exclaimed. "Are you Harry's cousin? I do believe I remember you from the platform. I'm Arthur Weasley, father of the bride." He stuck his hand out, and, reluctantly, Dudley took it as Cho glared at him with the look she gave him when she thought he was behaving impolitely. The man shook his hand firmly, oblivious to any discomfort from Dudley.

"Yes, yes, we'll get started any minute now, you'll be going out and taking your seats pretty soon..." he continued.

"Thank, you, sir, for inviting us," he said stupidly.

The man looked bewildered.

"Me? Oh, no, son, I didn't invite anyone. That was all the bride and groom's doing..."

"Arthur?" a woman called. "She's about ready, I think. What about Harry?"

"Harry's been ready for a while now," he yelled back.

"Okay," she said, "well, get everyone seated, then."

"Well," Mr. Weasley said, looking back at them, "you can go out to the tent now."

At the tent, yet another redheaded man took Cho's arm and lead the pair to two chairs. Dudley looked around at everything. He had never seen such a beautifully decorated tent in his lifetime, as strange as it sounded. There were red roses and ribbons everywhere. He had seen in the magazines that his mother was so fond of that every wedding needed a color theme. He supposed that red was this one's. He noted that blue or yellow might be nice for his and Cho's wedding.

After a while, the tent began to fill up, and, eventually, the groom arrived, and the thing he had both dreaded and anticipated began.

The service was beautiful, as girly as it sounded for him to admit it.

At the reception, which was also done in the tent, due to magic that helped them clean out the things from the wedding, things continued to surprise him. The boy who slightly resembled Harry brought cake to Cho first, then Dudley. As he handed Dudley his plate, his hair turned blonde and his eyes brown. It was all he could do not to cry out. After the boy left, Cho laughed at him.

"What did he just do?" he asked.

"He's a Metamorphmagus," she said.

"Meaning?"

"He can change his appearance at will."

After a number of people startled him and Cho continued to laugh, getting the hiccups at one point and chugging water from her glass, he finally saw Harry, who just so happened to be making his way over to him.

"Dudley," he said.

"Harry," he replied, "I'm sorry that you had to invite u- I mean, me, just because we're relate-"

"Dudley," he said, his eyes meeting his, "I don't think you're a waste of space."

They both smiled.

"Thanks," he said.

As soon as everyone was seated, he made his way up to the microphone on a whim, taking his glass and fork with him. He tapped the microphone.

"Is this thing on? Okay, yes. I'm Dudley Dursley, and I want to say congratulations to my cousin, Harry Potter..."
Chapter Endnotes: I hope you enjoyed it! This story required quite a bit of research on the lifespan of a Scops owl, so I could see if Pigwidgeon would still be alive. While nothing came up on the Scops owl itself, a snowy owl can live up to 25 years in captivity, so I guessed that Pigwidgeon could, too. Reviews are always appreciated!