The owl came on a Wednesday morning, right as Dudley Dursley was buttering toast and trying not to think about calories. His daughter, Emma, was eating cereal with the quiet intensity of someone who had, two days earlier, accidentally exploded the vacuum cleaner.

The owl perched on the kitchen windowsill and blinked at Dudley in a deeply judgmental way.

Emma frowned.

“Dad… there’s a bird.”

“A very big bird,” Dudley muttered. He put down his toast, walked to the window, and — with the grim resignation of a man who had expected this since the vacuum incident — opened it.

The owl swooped in, dropped a thick envelope onto Emma’s cereal, and flew out again without so much as an apology.

Emma stared.

“Dad… is this…?”

Dudley sighed. “Yeah. It’s the thing Harry warned me about.”

Emma tore open the envelope. Inside was the cream-colored letter, the green ink, the crest, the impossible words:

HOGWARTS SCHOOL OF WITCHCRAFT AND WIZARDRY

She screamed. Dudley flinched.

He took a slow breath. “Alright,” he said carefully. “Don’t panic. We’ll call Harry.”

Emma blinked. “Why?”

Dudley scratched his head. “Because he’s… sort of the family expert.”

He didn’t tell her the truth — that somewhere between the dementor attack, the apology he never voiced properly, and the awkward Christmas cards, Harry Potter had become the only person Dudley trusted with this.