FicWad

Concentrating on the memories – /bullying, insults, pain, Harry Hunting. Loneliness (but he wanted to be friends, please!), a cupboard under the stairs, fitted with a lock on the outside and filled with dust and spiders on the inside (but why not a bedroom, when they had four and were just using two?), hunger, thirst, hard work under the hot sun, in the cold, in the rain, (they hated him, why, why, what did he do? What could he have possibly ever done to make them hate him so much?), scoldings and beatings (but he tried, he tried all the time, and so hard!), more work, inside, while others lounged about or played, and more pain, for doing the work, for being too good at the work, and again, for not doing the work as quickly as they demanded, hampered by clothes that were too big for him and limbs weak with thirst and hunger and tired out by too quick, miraculous (freakish!) healings. Punishments for lying (but he was telling the truth!), punishments for laziness and for ingratitude (but he was trying to be good, trying to make them love him, why couldn’t they see, why didn’t they love him?), punishments for his freakish nature (but he didn’t mean it, didn’t mean to, couldn’t help it, it just happened, when he was hurt!), and no kindness, no presents, not even on his birthday or Christmas, only more pain, more hunger, more thirst, and more impossible tasks, with an occasional false gift thrown in just so they could laugh at him and make how much they hated him all the more obvious. Chores and chores and chores (though he always worked so hard, trying to show them he was good, he was lovable, he wasn’t bad) and insults, scolding, punishments (but what did he do?), more pain (but wasn’t he right to heal himself, so that no one ever saw, so that they wouldn’t get in trouble for hurting him?), the beginning of despair (freak, he was a freak, just an unnatural, evil, freak of nature), hollowness starting to set in, behind the masks (what if one day the hollowness ate him alive?), despite all he learned and all he knew and all he carefully told himself over and over and over again (they are the ones who are wrong, who are evil, who are bad and unnatural, they are the ones, for doing these things!), a thought niggling away at the back of mind, wondering if it would be so bad if his freakish nature deserted him, just once, just long enough for him to die of thirst or starve to death or bleed to death, some night after a beating, locked away in his cupboard with no food or water – /left him feeling sick and dizzy and afraid of the way these people might respond to gaining such intimate knowledge of his life. As if sensing his unease, though, Cedric turned around to lock eyes with him and passionately remind him that he had volunteered to be Harry’s personal witness and that no one had the right to refuse to allow him to view the contents of the Pensieve, given the vows he’d already sworn and the binding contracts he’d signed in order to get that fact recorded in the paperwork for the complaint.

The three adults looked at least as uneasy as Harry felt about it, but they nonetheless let Cedric join them around the second, completely full Pensieve once Madam Bones and Auror Scrimgeour had charmed a complete copy of the contents of first Pensieve into the second and then allowed the original extracted memories to return where they belonged, with Harry. Mr. Diggory then warned Harry that, when they went to view the memories in the second Pensieve, it would appear as if the Pensieve had pulled them all bodily down into its depths. This effect, he explained, was due to the fact that Pensieve magic worked by inserting the viewers of collected memories directly into those gathered memories, so that they could hear and see and otherwise experience absolutely everything that had happened over the course of events catalogued by those specific memories. Viewers could communicate with each other, but they could not communicate with the beings present in the actual memories or otherwise influence the actual outcome of those memories. When the memories had run their course, the viewers would then be ejected back out of the Pensieve. Viewers could be forcefully ejected prematurely from a Pensieve, but that kind of thing required powerful spells, and it was unlikely in the extreme that anyone with sufficient knowledge of those spells would be able to break into Amos’ office in order to perform those spells before the viewing was over with. Amos talked Harry into sitting down at the chair behind his desk, and Cedric hunted him up the day’s copy of the most popular wizarding newspaper – The Daily Prophet – so that Harry would have something to occupy himself with for the next half hour or so. After that, Cedric and the three adults leaned in around the second Pensieve until their heads were all crowded together and practically touching the surface of that misty semi-liquid. They vanished in a flash of silvery light in the same moment when it looked like they were coming into actual contact with the memories of the Pensieve, and Harry settled down to wait, patiently looking over the wizarding newspaper with its moving pictures and marching headlines.

Exactly half an hour later, there was another flash of silver light, and the four witnesses came back out of the Pensieve in a chaotic rush. Madam Bones was sobbing hysterically and clinging to a wet-faced, stony-eyed Auror Scrimgeour, and Mr. Diggory immediately ran across the room to a wastebasket where he noisily emptied the contents of his stomach. Cedric – looking so pale that he skin had a sickly blue-green cast to it – staggered over to Harry and collapsed into the floor at his feet. “How – how could you – how could you possibly – ?”

“How did I stand them? I didn’t think I had a choice, remember?” Harry asked back, shrugging in order to avoid giving in to the urge to grin (an urge that he was sure would make him look obscenely like a skeleton or else a death’s head in its final rictus of rigor mortis).

“Harry, Harry, I can’t let you go to a family that might not love you. I can’t do it. You – you deserve so much more, so much better, but I can’t take the chance that someone like them or – Merlin help us! – like Dumbledore and willing to sacrifice you might get you, I just can’t do it! Harry, have you heard of blood brothers?” Cedric demanded, shakily pulling out his wand.

Startled by the apparent change of subject, Harry found himself frowning even as he nodded. “Well, Muggles have a sort of vow involving blood brothers, so yeah. Is it different in the wizarding world, though?”

Cedric nodded so rapidly that his hair flopped down across his forehead into his eyes and he had to shove it back out of the way so that he could see Harry again. “It’s a binding vow – a magical contract. We’re friends. I think it safe to say I’m the first true friend you’ve ever had,” Cedric choked out, his voice clogged with unshed tears. “I took responsibility for your life, in a way, when I brought you here, because a complaint like this can grant a person a new life. That’s enough of a basis to make it work, if you want it.” Then, a bit shakily, as though compelled to explain something that he was afraid might make Harry refuse him, he added, “It’s not a small thing, Harry. It’s considered a rather huge thing, actually. But this is the best way I know to keep you safe. The Ministry will have to let you come with us, /to us/, as a part of our family, if we do this. They won’t be able to send you off with just any old wizarding family that might ask for you because they want to hurt you or be able to claim to be fostering The-Boy-Who-Lived.”

Harry hesitated less than a heartbeat before nodding once, decisively. “I want to, then. If you’re sure you want to. Please.”

Nodding, Cedric pushed himself back up out of the floor, wobbling a little as he stood over Harry. He stood there a few moments, either waiting for the shakiness to pass or willing it away, and then, holding his wand carefully above his left hand, he whispered a Latin-sounding word that seemed, to Harry, to be a command for severing or cutting, drawing the tip of his wand lightly across his palm and opening up a long, shallow scratch. Blood instantly welled up from the cut, shockingly red, and Harry flinched, reflexively at the sight. Seeing him recoil, Cedric hastened to assure him, “This isn’t a Dark spell or anything nasty like that, Harry. It’s – it’s old magic. Magic from the days before we had wands to help us focus and direct our power. I know you’ve been hurt a lot and I hate to have to make you bleed, but the spell needs to be able to mix a bit of our blood together to really work. If you give me your hand, I promise I’ll be careful to make the cut as small and as shallow as I possibly can.”

“It’ll probably heal quick. You’ll have to do it fast, whatever it is that you’re going to be doing,” Harry warned him, holding Cedric’s gaze so that he could see that Harry wasn’t afraid.

“I’ll be as fast and as careful as I can, then,” Cedric promised. Nodding understanding and agreement, Harry held out his left hand for Cedric to draw the wand lightly over the skin, opening a matching shallow cut. He didn’t even flinch; the wound was so minor that he didn’t even really feel the hurt of it. Besides which, Cedric was gripping Harry’s cut palm tightly in his – their shallow cuts carefully lined up together – so quickly, afterwards, that he didn’t even have time enough to register the sight of his own blood to feel the reflexive sting that such a sight always seemed to bring with it. And then Cedric began to speak, and Harry forgot all about the cut on his palm and whether or not it should have hurt him at all. “From this moment forward,” Cedric promised, his voice somehow both utterly serious and undeniably fervent, “I vow that I will be as loyal to you as if you and I were of one blood, born from the same womb. Your blood is my blood, from this moment forward.”

Afterwards, Harry couldn’t have said why he felt the need to repeat the words. He just knew, somehow, that he was supposed to return the vow. And so he did, quietly but seriously promising, “And from this moment forward, I vow to be loyal to you as if you and I were of one blood, born from the same womb. Your blood is my blood, from this moment forward.” At once, he felt what he could have only described as a rush of warmth and strength and power flowing up from the tiny cut on his palm and sweeping all throughout the entirety of his body. He gasped, startled, and shivered, convulsively, as he saw Cedric’s mouth fall open and his head pitch back on his neck, body arcing back in a bow as if a current of electricity had shot through him. Harry leapt up off the chair – still clasping hands with Cedric – and was just able to catch the older boy as he started to sag down to the floor.

As Harry awkwardly pulled Cedric into a one-armed embrace and hauled desperately upwards, to keep him on his feet, Cedric whispered, breathlessly gasping the words out as if he’d just run a marathon, “Great . . . Merlin! Harry! How . . . powerful . . . are you?”

Harry shrugged distractedly, trying to help steady Cedric so that he was carrying at least part of his own weight and they wouldn’t both end up falling down because Harry was too small and too weak to support his added weight. “I don’t know. Strong enough to stay alive for nearly ten years with the Dursleys.”

“I – I don’t think I’ve ever felt that much raw power. You must be . . . incredibly strong,” Cedric told him, still sounding more than a little dazed, but aware enough to be able to stand up on his own, though he moved to return the embrace until they were actually sharing a real hug.

“So . . . that’s old magic?” Harry finally asked.

Cedric nodded, replying with a still slightly breathless, “Yeah.”

Frowning slightly, Harry asked, a little hesitantly, “So now we’re . . . like family?”

Cedric immediately shook his head. “Not ‘like,’ Harry. We are family, now. I’m your brother and you’re mine, just the same as if we’d been born so. Any magic that tries to call on your family will now automatically be directed immediately towards us, the Diggorys.”

Boggled at the enormity of such a thing (could magic actually change a person’s DNA?) Harry tried to ask, “Cedric, are – are you sure you – ?”

Cedric, though, cut him off, firmly but patiently telling him, “Harry, the magic of a blood vow doesn’t lie solely in the blood shed and mixed together or the words spoken. The ones who speak the oaths must mean them for them to become binding. The magic wouldn’t have activated if we hadn’t both wanted this. We’re blood brothers now, for good and all. The only way a vow like this can be altered is if both of the oath-takers genuinely want to replace it with another kind of vow forging a different but equally important kind of tie.”

As the gravity of what had happened finally broke over Harry, he found himself shaking uncontrollably. With a cry that was half laugh and half sob, he burrowing into Cedric’s warmth, not only relaxing into the embrace but actually clinging to him openly. And, for the first time in a very long time, indeed, Harry chose to allow himself to cry. Weeping largely silent tears (for he had taught himself to cry quietly, to avoid making any noise that otherwise might have attracted unwanted attention, long before he’d been able to teach himself to avoid crying altogether, when there was a question of choice), he whispered a heartfelt, “Thank you, Cedric. Thank god for you,” and held on tight, crying for ten years, less three months, of abject loneliness, of no love and little kindness, of lies and deceit piled upon each other and solidified into masks so rigid that he had long since begun to fear that soon there would be nothing left of himself but hollowness beneath their lying facades. He had never been held before, that he could remember, before this day, and so Harry wept, for the breaking of masks and silences, neglect and abuse and isolation, a little surprised to find that he could still love but even more shocked to learn that there existed someone who could so unconditionally love him back.

Harry was still crying when a tearful Amos Diggory descended on them to whirl his boys in a victorious circle across the room and embrace his new son, and, for the first time he could ever remember, Harry didn’t feel the least bit ashamed or self-conscious of his tears. They were tears of joy, not pain or sorrow. By Merlin, he’d earned them and he was going to bloody well enjoy them! He was still crying – though he was laughing through the tears – when the block on the fireplace fell and an absolutely frantic looking Hagrid hurriedly thrust his bushy head into the room, bellowing frenetically for Harry.

***

It took a long time for them to get Hagrid to calm down.

Hagrid, as it turned out, had been too late to join them before the proceedings surrounding the filing of Harry’s complaint could be begun because he’d been so busy buying things for Harry that weren’t on his list (things like extra protective gear for the handling of magical creatures, already made up healing potions for things like cuts, burns, bruises, wrenched or torn muscles, and damaged joints or ligaments, all of them carefully sealed in charmed bottles and pots so that their containers wouldn’t break and the potions wouldn’t be able to go bad before they had a chance to be used, and a magnificent great while owl that Hagrid had actually purchased entirely with his own money, as a birthday present for Harry) that he’d lost track of the time and hadn’t even made it to Flourish and Blotts until nearly forty-five minutes after the two boys had already Flooed from there out to Amos Diggory’s office at the Ministry. When he’d finally shown up at the bookstore, he’d somehow managed to come in a back way, and had been blithely collecting Harry’s required schoolbooks (along with a few extra volumes about magical creatures, magical plants, healing potions, forestry, and the like) when Arnold Abbott caught sight of him. Blinky, who knew enough about Ministry procedures to understand that Hagrid was already too late to be able to catch up with them before the filing of complaint could begin, decided to let him go ahead and finish browsing before she delivered Cedric’s message, since he seemed to be having such a good time hunting out books about various magical creatures and she happened to be in the midst of fetching both Cedric schoolbooks and a baker’s dozen various books that Mrs. Diggory had made a list for, so that they would be purchased on the next trip to Diagon Alley. By the time Hagrid finally made his way up to the front with two stacks of books (one for him and one for Harry), though, Blinky had already finished her shopping for the Diggorys and sent the purchases home, so she was waiting for him.

At first, though, Hagrid hadn’t wanted to listen to the little house-elf, so sure was he that the boys were on their way to meet him. When he’d finally realized the time and just how late he’d been getting to the store and how much later that made the boys, though, he started to panic. Then became extremely flustered and begged to borrow the store’s fireplace, so that he could call up to Hogwarts and speak to Headmaster Dumbledore about what was happening and what he should do. The school’s headmaster, though, wasn’t in. Apparently, he was out for the day, off in Muggle London somewhere, stocking up on supplies (including his favorite Muggle sweets and more of the garishly bright, fancifully patterned socks that he favored so highly) for the coming school year. The Deputy Headmistress, Minerva McGonagall, had been so completely horrified to learn that Harry Potter had been taken to the Ministry of Magic to file a complaint against his Muggle relatives with the office that handled crimes against underage witches and wizards that she had fainted dead away, striking her head on the floor hard enough that it made Hargrid wince in the telling of the incident. Hagrid had been forced to place a firecall to the school’s infirmary so that someone would know to go and fetch her, and, with both the Headmaster and the Deputy Headmistress unavailable, had finally been forced to travel to the Ministry and simply wait. Since Amos’ fireplace was blocked, that was the only fireplace at the Ministry he had a password for, and the witch minding the waiting room that Amos’ fireplace was charmed to reroute incoming passengers to was concerned that the fireplace for that particular room might not be large enough for Hagrid and all of his numerous packages (which he unfortunately could not shrink, not having a wand to activate the necessary charms built in to the packaging) to Floo into, Hagrid ended up having to go back up Diagon Alley to the Leaky Cauldron and out into Muggle London, where he then had to head down towards the river so that he could find the largest of the actual physical entrances into Ministry Headquarters.

As it turned out, Blinky could have made things much easier for Hagrid simply by using the house-elf form of Apparition to magic him, full-sized packages and all, into the visitor’s lobby at the Ministry. However, Blinky was so offended by Hagrid’s repeated protestations that Headmaster Dumbledore, the greatest wizard of the ages, had specifically chosen to locate Harry Potter’s last remaining blood relatives for the express purpose of placing Harry with them, /for his own good and safety/, following the fateful Halloween that saw both the deaths of Lily and James Potter (and the orphaning of Harry) and the destruction of Voldemort’s corporeal form, that she never even bothered to offer to take him there. From the moment Hagrid had first understood that Cedric had taken Harry to the Ministry so that Harry could file a complaint against his Muggle relatives, the gamekeeper had kept up a steady stream of protests to the effect that, since the great Dumbledore had purposefully placed Harry with the Dursleys, the Dursleys couldn’t possibly be so bad as to warrant having a complaint filed against them and, thus, Harry had to be mistaken, and therefore making a grave mistake with serious possible consequences. Blinky was so upset with Hagrid and his insistence on trusting to Dumbledore’s infallibility even above the evidence of his own eyes that she actually abandoned him in the backroom of Flourish and Blotts and went to find Mrs. Diggory instead, so she could tell her all about what was going on and her hope that the Diggorys would ask to foster or adopt Harry so that Blinky could personally see to it that he finally got enough to eat. Hagrid was alone (but for his purchases, including that lovely snowy white owl), confused and worried and, because of his fanatic loyalty to Dumbledore, refusing to actually consider the fact that Harry might indeed be justified in asking to file a complaint against the Dursleys, well on the way to working himself up to a full-blown case of hysterics.

An hysterical Hagrid wasn’t a very pretty sight. Auror Scrimgeour had to practically stun him, to keep him from snatching Harry up and running away with him, and Madam Bones was so angry that she gave him such a tongue-lashing that he ended up cowering in a corner and had to be frog-marched over to the Pensieve, which then had to be shoved up practically into his nose before he finally recovered enough to go into the Pensieve’s memories willingly. By then, the Deputy Headmistress of Hogwarts was calling, and Auror Scrimgeour once again had to almost stun Hagrid to keep him from going into the Pensieve alone instead of waiting the extra handful of minutes it would take to get Minerva McGonagall into Amos’ office so that she could go into the Pensieve’s collected memories with him. Professor McGonagall – a rather severe-looking, stern-faced, tall, slender witch in fitted, dark emerald green robes and a wide-brimmed pointy hat (a witches’ hat, Harry would’ve called it, if not for the fact that he’d seen some wizards wearing hats just like it, though not always with a brim, on his trip through Diagon Alley) who had sharp features, dark blue eyes behind very small oval spectacles, and graying but still mostly dark and apparently quite long (given the size of the bun it made) hair drawn up into a tight bun very near the top of her head – Flooed over promptly, despite some protestations from the school’s nurse and licensed Healer, and she and Hagrid then promptly went into the Pensieve while Madam Bones and Auror Scrimgeour politely excused themselves to the next room so that they could get started on organizing the Ministry’s response to Harry’s filing of complaint against the Dursleys. Amos Diggory, meanwhile, cast a spell on one of his armchairs to transfigure it into a sofa, sat Cedric and Harry down there with another round of butterbeers, and excused himself for a bit to make a firecall up to the Diggorys’ house, in hopes of speaking to his wife or at least giving the house-elves orders so that they’d know to expect another person for supper and could get started on converting one of the spare rooms into a bedroom for Harry.

While Madam Bones and Auror Scrimgeour worked on Harry’s complaint, Hagrid and Professor McGonagall viewed the Pensieve, and Amos made his firecall home, Cedric sat and told Harry all about Ottery St. Catchpole, in Devon – which was sort of the wizarding side of the Muggle town of Ottery St. Mary, and, being just up the River Otter from it, was just a bit further northeast from Exeter than Ottery St. Mary – where the Diggory house was, and all of the things that they would be able to do, now that they were blood brothers. Cedric briefly told Harry about some of the other wizarding families who lived in Ottery St. Catchpole – for example, Arthur and Molly Weasley, who were both red-heads, lived in a place called the Burrow, just a little ways to the east of Ottery St. Catchpole proper, and had seven red-headed children (six boys and a girl) ranging in age from twenty (not quite twenty-one, actually, since Bill had a birthday near the end of November) to ten (the girl, Ginevra, or Ginny, being the youngest child); Victoria and William Fawcett, who lived in a lovely old townhouse right in the middle of town known as Fountain’s Head, had a boy just enough older than Cedric to be in the year above him at Hogwarts (though Richard was also in Hufflepuff) and twin girls (Nimue in Ravenclaw and Vivian in Hufflepuff) who were a year older than Harry; and Laurence Lovegood, who was editor of the somewhat odd but always entertaining wizarding newspaper The Quibbler and a widower whose wife, Naomi, had died about a year and a half ago in a tragic magical accident somehow related to her work at the Ministry as an Unspeakable, lived at Lovegood Lagoon, in a bend of the river (where the Tale met River Otter) on the west end of town, and had a daughter, Luna, about the same age as Ginny Weasley (around a year younger than Harry) – who were considered friends of the family. The Diggorys actually lived a little bit north of town, further up the river, at Kirkwold Manse, and Harry was sure, from the way that Cedric described the place, that Harry would fall in love with the place.

Cedric had just finished hastily describing Kirkwold Manse (a centuries-old rambling country house that sounded, to Harry, as if it were basically a castle, though Cedric described it more as if it were a dozen or so thatched cottages and fieldstone villas and towers all whimsically pieced together, in a sort of mishmash that sounded as if someone had taken part of Woodway House of Teignmouth, combined that with a bit of Kirkham House, and then peppered the result with bits and pieces of Compton Castle and Castle Drogo) when Auror Scrimgeour and Madam Bones came back into Amos’ office. Cedric waited a few moments, to see if either one of the adults was going to say anything important, but they had apparently timed their reappearance to the Pensieve, because less than a minute later the Pensieve released Professor McGonagall and Hagrid, and it soon proved to be a good thing that the two Ministry workers had chosen to come back into the room just then, for although Hagrid came out of the Pensieve’s collected memories eerily calm and quiet, the Deputy Headmistress came out of it quite literally spitting sparks, so outraged that she was shedding flashes of accidental magic like a cat shedding fur from a winter coat in the late spring. (Cedric later told Harry, in an oddly awed tone of voice, that he’d never even suspected that the transfiguration professor was capable of such anger. McGonagall might have somewhat stern and prone to occasional flashes of wickedly biting sarcasm, but she was also scrupulously fair and widely known to be one of the most unflappable of all the Hogwarts’ staff. Cedric had neither seen nor known of McGonagall ever becoming angry enough to lose her temper – not even when faced with one of the legendary pranks of the Weasley twins, Fred and George – and her display of uncontrolled temper, on exiting the Pensieve, was so out of character for her that it was doubly frightening. It almost – not quite, but almost – made him feel sorry for Headmaster Dumbledore, since quite a bit of her ire seemed focused around the fact that he was the one who’d made the decision to leave Harry with the Dursleys instead of allowing him to be placed with a wizarding family who would have loved him.)

Harry’s attention, though, was focused on Hagrid, who seemed to have come out of the Pensieve a change man, the normally quite cheerful (and mostly harmless, if not exactly gentle) giant of a man white as a sheet and eerily still. Hagrid looked over at Harry with dark, haunted eyes, and quietly proclaimed, “They’d just better lock them Dursleys up forever. If they don’, I swear ter Merlin I’ll kill ’em. I don’ right know what Dumbledore musta been thinkin’, to leave yeh with them awful Muggles, but he was wrong ter do it. Yeh would’a been safer in our world, former Death Eaters and supporters of You-Know-Who still runnin’ about free or not. At least yeh would’a been with a family that loved yeh. Dunno what Dumbledore thought he was doin’, but I reckon those Dursleys are just as bad as You-Know-Who, in a way. Mr. Diggory, sir,” he continued, turning and striding over to Amos Diggory, where he was standing in front of the fireplace, “yer a good man, ter see ter Harry like this. An’ that’s a right fine young man, yer lad Cedric is, fer gettin’ Harry here ter yeh. If there’s ever sommat yeh be needin’, Mr. Diggory, then I’m yer man, I am,” Hagrid nodded firmly, solemnly shaking hands with Mr. Diggory. That done, he then started sorting through all of the various packages he’d brought into the Ministry with him, so that the purchases and gifts meant for Harry (and, as it turned out, the only items paid for with Harry’s money had been the ones listed on his acceptance letter as mandatory supplies and texts. Before he’d left Hogwarts to deliver a copy of Harry’s letter, Hagrid had gotten permission from Dumbledore to pick up a few extra things for Harry, to make up for all the years he’d had to live without magic. Thus, all the extra books and potions and protective gear Hagrid had picked up in various shops on Diagon Alley had all been purchased on a Hogwarts tab, while Hagrid had paid for a snowy white owl himself, intending to give her to Harry as a birthday present) all went into a careful pile on and around the other armchair flanking the fireplace, while the rest was either tucked away in various pockets of Hagrid’s coat or else piled to one side, out of the way of the fireplace, so that Hagrid could tuck it all safely under his arms when he finally left.

The Deputy Headmistress, meanwhile, had an absolute fit. She came out of the Pensieve with her blood up, and she was so outraged that her magic quite literally visibly surrounded her in a crackling aura, like a crawling, clinging storm of extremely nasty electrostatic shocks, like hundreds of miniature lightning bolts. The first words out of her mouth – a vehemently angry declaration: “I told Albus not to leave the bairn with those Muggles! I told him that they were the very worst sort of Muggles, that they could never possibly understand a child like Harry and he would never have a normal life with them, but did he listen to me? No! Merlin forbid the great Albus Dumbledore should ever listen to someone else’s opinion!” – prompted Madam Bones to spring into action, putting up what Cedric would later explain to Harry to be a privacy ward, so that Professor McGonagall could continue to rant and rave to her heart’s content and no one not inside the bounds of the ward would have to actually listen to her. Personally, Harry felt indebted to Madam Bones for casting the ward. The Professor looked terrifying enough as it was (with power arcing about her furiously, like the lashing tails of a thousand angry cats), without having to hear whatever vitriol she was heaping on Albus Dumbledore for unilaterally deciding to leave Harry with the Dursleys and the Dursleys themselves for being such hideously awful people and horrible Muggles to boot. Harry rather thought that even Hagrid (who, after all, knew the woman quite well, given that they had both been working for Hogwarts for several decades) looked a bit frightened by her display of temper, given the way he’d sent her such an uneasy sidelong glance and even gone out of his way to leave a good amount of open space in between them when he’d skirted his way around her, to head towards the fireplace.

Hagrid even shot the furious Deputy Headmistress another wary glance, when he was done sorting through all of the parcels he’d been carrying. She was quite obviously just getting up a good head of steam, though, given that she was waving her hands around violently for emphasis, blood-red sparks of power crackling off of the ends of her fingers as she gestured, and so, shaking his head, Hagrid quietly noted, his voice an odd mixture of abject sorrow and utter bemusement, “I never thought I’d live ter see the day when Professor McGonagall completely lost her temper. An’ I wish ter Merlin I never had. I imagine she’ll be along when she’s sure yer goin’ ter be alright, Harry. I know the Diggorys will take good care o’ yeh, though, and I need ter be headin’ back home. Fang will be wantin’ his supper, he will, and someone should be there ter tell Dumbledore what’s happened. Anyways, I figure yeh’ll be wantin’ ter spend some time with yer new family now. So. This,” he explained, reaching back to the other armchair to lift up the large cage with its snowy white owl and then carrying it over to the transfigured sofa, “is just sommat I got fer yer birthday. Beautiful, ain’t she? I got an owl on account o’ the fact I don’ much like cats – they make me sneeze, yeh know – and toads went outta fashion years ago, so yeh’d be laughed at if yeh showed up at Hogwarts with one o’ them. Besides, all the kids want owls – they’re dead useful, carry yer mail and everythin’. Yeh’ll have ter come up with a name fer her, now, and a good ’un, so she’ll know ter come when called fer. I’m sure that Cedric there can teach yeh all the rest ’bout what yeh’ll need ter know, ter take care o’ her an’ all. Now, don’ try ter say yeh don’ want or deserve her – I know yeh do and yeh bloody deserve a right few more real presents than those Dursleys have ever got fer yeh, sure as Merlin was a great an’ powerful wizard,” Hagrid quietly but firmly insisted, effectively heading off all of the arguments against accepting such a wonderfully generous gift that Harry might have otherwise made. Nodding in obvious satisfaction as Harry simply accepted the caged owl, Hagrid told them, “Yeh boys are brothers now, so yeh take good care o’ each other, yeh here?”

“We will, Hagrid. You can be sure of that,” Cedric gravely promised, nodding earnestly and politely offering Hagrid his right hand to shake.

When Harry went to do the same, though, promising, “You don’t have to worry, Hagrid. We’ll be fine,” before leaning over to carefully place the cage on the floor so that he could then hold out his hand to Hagrid and so shake hands, Hagrid accepted the proffered hand only to use it to pull Harry up into a hug that somehow managed to be both gentle and strong. He flinched a little at first, reflexively, but Hagrid so obviously meant well and was being so careful with him that Harry finally managed to relax into the embrace and even to enjoy it, at least a little bit.

Hagrid’s eyes were streaming tears when he finally pulled away. “Yeh be sure ter call me, if there’s ever sommat yeh need. Rubeus Hagrid, Keeper of Keys and Grounds at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Hagrid’s Hut is the address fer firecallin’ and Flooin’. I’m yer man, Harry. Always.” With that final reminder, Hagrid nodded briskly, reclaimed his things, accepted a handful of Floo powder from Mr. Diggory, and then departed for Hogwarts by use of that very same address.

No sooner had Hagrid left than the fire roared and turned green, and a few moments later a tall, slender witch in a fitted set of lightweight, silvery-blue silk robes that looked rather like a fancy party dress, to Harry, Flooed into the room. The newcomer (obviously a witch) had one of those utterly smooth, lovely ageless faces that could have belonged to a woman anywhere from the age of twenty-five to fifty, with the kind of obviously well-kept, soft skin that Harry tended to associate with the idle well-to-do. She was wearing her hair up in an elaborate-looking crown of braids that shaded from a very light gold hue to a rich dark honey color, and, if he’d been asked to guess, Harry would have said that she was probably a natural dark blonde – the kind of blonde whose hair may have grown in a light golden brown at the roots but was nevertheless the color of ripe golden wheat at the tips, the color naturally bleached lighter by years of sunlight. She had a very upright carriage and a regal bearing, but her most striking feature were her extremely pale, silvery-blue eyes (which looked, to Harry, like two miniature oceans reflecting moonlight), the bright, shockingly light color changing, when she titled her head, from a brightly burnished silver at one angle to an icily pale blue in another. Her eyes reminded Harry a little bit of Cedric’s and a little bit of Draco Malfoy’s, and he would have been unnerved by their almost luminous paleness if she hadn’t been smiling – a heartbreakingly lovely expression that somehow made those icy-colored eyes seem warm and welcoming. Harry knew, by that smile, that it had to be Amabelle Diggory, and an instant later Cedric bounded happily to his feet, crying out, “Mum!” as he eagerly pulled Harry up from the transfigured sofa behind him, proving beyond a doubt that it was Mrs. Diggory.

“Cedric, dear, your father tells me you’ve found yourself a brother.”

It wasn’t a question, but Cedric ducked his head down and nodded in agreement anyway. “Mum, I’d like you to meet Harry – my blood brother,” Cedric announced, not bothering to hide either his happiness or the note of pride in his voice, as he placed his left hand in the small of Harry’s back and gently urged him a little ways forward, towards Amabelle.

“Harry.” Cedric’s mother gazed at him intently for a handful of quiet moments before she finally sighed once, sadly, and told him, “You shall grow tired of hearing this soon enough, I imagine, but you truly do resemble your parents, child. Lily had the greenest eyes I’d ever seen, while James had the most untamable black hair of anyone I’d ever know, and you’ve inherited both. Anyone who knew them would know you as their son. Harry, your parents were very good people. They were younger than Amos and I by a handful of years, so we were not the closest of friends, but we were all brothers and sisters in arms, in the war against the Dark Lord, and I know that they would want a much better home for you than the one you’ve known with your Muggle relatives. I would be glad indeed if you would consent to becoming my son legally, as well as through the magically binding oath of brotherhood you’ve sworn with my son. Amos and I have always wanted a larger family, and anyone my son deems worthy of becoming his blood brother is, in my opinion, more than worthy of full adoption within our family. That you are James and Lily’s son only makes me that much more certain of your worth. I know that Amos and I could never replace your parents, Harry – nor are we so foolish as to wish to try to do so – but you are more than welcome to join our family, if you would like to. Amos and I would love to have you, but only if you’re sure that it’s what you want,” she told him, stressing the fact that it was Harry’s choice and that they would abide by his wishes, whatever he might decide. “We will foster you gladly, until you are of age in our world, if that is all you wish of us. But Harry, we are more than willing to adopt you as our own, if you wish it and will allow us to do so, legally.”

“I – I would be proud to be your son, Mrs. Diggory. Mr. Diggory. If – if it isn’t too much to ask, and if you’re both sure that you want me – ” Harry hesitantly began to reply, wringing his hands a little to keep himself from doing something foolish, like crying or blurting out whatever happened to come into his head without thinking it through first, making himself slow down and remain calm enough to double-check and make sure that they understood what they were offering him and that they really meant to offer it, no matter how much he wanted to just accept what the Diggorys were offering right away.

“Son, we’re both sure. We’d have to be heartless and brainless to boot, not to want you. There’s something very wrong with those Muggle relatives of yours. They don’t have enough heart and spirit to make up even a single working soul, between the whole lot of them. They’re mad, not to have loved you or wanted you,” Amos Diggory gently but firmly cut him off. “Any parents would be blessed beyond measure, to count you as their child. We would love to have you, Harry. Truly, we would.”

“Then – then, yes, please,” Harry replied, a hitch in his voice making the words come out softer than he’d intended. Making himself look up at Mr. and Mrs. Diggory both (though he had to blink rapidly, to keep himself from crying), he then added, as clearly and as steadily as he could, “I would like that. I would like it very much, if you’re both sure.”

“/Yes/, Harry,” Amabelle Diggory instantly and fervently promised, opening her arms wide and somehow managing to swoop both Cedric and Harry up in a strong, unabashedly joyous hug.

“And welcome to the family!” Amos Diggory added, beaming happily as he also opened his arms wide, moving to embrace the whole lot of them.

Then Amabelle was crying and Cedric and Amos were both sort of laughing and crying at the same time, and Harry figured that, with all those tears, it would be all right if he cried some, too, after all, so he relaxed into the strange but wonderful four-way embrace until, his heart hurting with wholly unaccustomed joy, it felt safe for him to let the tears fall. And then, for the first in a very long time indeed, Harry finally felt as if he were someplace he truly belonged.

Harry couldn’t have said, afterwards, how long the four-way embrace lasted, at least not for sure (though it certainly felt like a lovely long time, and it probably was, considering how hot and tired Harry’s eyes felt, from crying), but eventually Amabelle and Amos shifted away into a hug of their own while Cedric sort of pulled Harry along with him, back to the transfigured sofa, his left arm curled in a protective sort of half embrace around Harry’s shoulders. Cedric was laughing, a little giddily, and saying something about how he was going to have teach Harry how to fly, so they could have a few pick-up Quidditch games with the Weasleys and Fawcetts before school started, when the sound of a throat being cleared behind them made Harry nearly leap out of his skin in shock, turning around so quickly on the couch to see who was there that he nearly managed to tumble off of the edge of the cushion into the floor.

“Oh, dear! I didn’t mean to give you a fright, child,” Minerva McGonagall apologized, her normally no-nonsense attitude for once wholly in abeyance as she beamed unabashedly down at Harry, her Scottish brogue (normally restrained almost to the point of nonexistence) softening her words and giving them all a lovely, lilting, musical quality. “I just wanted to applaud your decision, in allowing the Diggorys to adopt you, child. I believe it to be a very wise choice, very wise, indeed, and the best thing you could do. The Diggorys are very good people, Harry, and they have resources and connections that they will not hesitate to use in order keep you safe – even from those who should not wish to do you harm,” she added, eyes flashing for a moment with mingled fury, betrayal, and sorrow. “Harry, child, I’ve no wish to sound like a bird of ill-omen, but you must know that there are some within our world who will seek to harm you, if they can, simply because you survived when the Dark Lord’s corporeal form did not. I don’t know how much Hagrid told you, about He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named and his followers, but the truth is that some of his most powerful and wealthy followers managed to avoid the prison sentences they so richly deserved by claiming that they were acting either under the influences of the Imperius Curse – an Unforgivable that allows the caster of the curse to bind and control the will and actions of those it is cast upon – or else by claiming that they were blackmailed or otherwise coerced into supporting the Dark Lord. Albus Dumbledore should have been among the greatest and most staunch of your protectors against the machinations of such evil beings, but the fact that Albus chose, willingly, to send you to live with those monstrous Dursleys and then deliberately left you there with them, when he must have known how badly they were treating you, does not particularly strike me as the act of a man with your safety or best interests at heart. I argued against leaving you with those Muggles, but like a fool I let myself be overturned by Dumbledore and his arguments about how much you needed and deserved to have a relatively normal, safe childhood, away from the threat of the Dark Lord’s Death Eaters and the adulation of our world, for being the one to survive the Dark Lord’s Killing Curse and turn it back upon him. Every year, at you birthday and Christmas and the beginning and end of the school year, I would ask Albus how you were, and it shames me to admit that I was hoodwinked into believing his stories about how the Dursleys had learned to love you and were raising you as if you were their own son. Albus has lied to my face at least twenty or thirty times about your life with those Muggles, and, while I don’t pretend to understand what he could possibly be playing at or hope to accomplish, thus, I do know that there is no reason on earth that is good enough to justify what he has done to you, and I am certain that Albus Dumbledore’s plans for you, whatever they may be, cannot be permitted to come to fruition. The boy who became He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named grew up as an orphan in Muggle London, and his childhood was rather like yours. I have always believed that a lack of basic caring and love in his life had a great deal to do with the reason why he fell so quickly and so deeply into the Dark Arts. I cannot imagine what Albus must have been thinking, to willingly condemn you to such a childhood, but I will personally see him brought up before the Wizengamot on charges of reckless endangerment and aiding and abetting child abuse and neglect before I will allow him to continue to ruin your life. I wouldn’t blame you if you’d prefer to never step foot in Hogwarts, now, knowing what kind of man is in charge of the school, but Harry, if you still wish to attend the school, despite knowing that the man who left you with those Muggles is the Headmaster, then I will personally vouch for your safety, there. I will see to it that every member of the staff and faculty is brought to the Ministry to view your Pensieve memories and that they understand that it was Dumbledore who placed you with that family and then purposefully left you there, even though there were easily dozens of other, far more suitable wizarding families who would have happily taken you in and loved you just as if you’d been their own son. Hogwarts is the one of the most heavily warded and defended places in the whole of the wizarding world – better protected than the Ministry and more heavily warded, even, than Beauxbatons Academy of Magic, Durmstrang Institute, or the Salem Institute of Witchcraft and Wizardry – so you should be safer there than anywhere else you might go. It’s your decision, of course, but I will do everything in my power to keep you safe, should you wish to attend.”

Harry just stared silently and a bit helplessly at the determined looking witch for several moments, though, too overwhelmed by the flood of words she’d loosed on him to be able to form a coherent response. Finally, feeling more than a little bewildered, he asked, “But where would I go for my schooling, if not Hogwarts?”

“If you didn’t wish to go away to school to someplace like Beauxbatons, then we could hire private tutors, Harry,” Amabelle Diggory immediately replied.

“And I’d stay at home with you or go wherever you wanted to go, if you weren’t going to Hogwarts,” Cedric stoutly declared, folding his arms across his chest determinedly.

“Isn’t Hogwarts the best school, though?” Harry asked, frowning a little.

“It is widely considered to be the best wizarding school in the world and is consistently rated in the top three wizarding academies, yes,” Minerva McGonagall replied, nodding.

“Then, if Voldemort – sorry, if You-Know-Who,” Harry hastily added, flinching himself at the violence of the collective flinch from Mr. and Mrs. Diggory, the Deputy Headmistress, and Cedric, just at the sound of the Dark Lord’s name, “is still out there somewhere, and if some of his most powerful and influential followers are still free, don’t I need to attend Hogwarts, so I can learn from the very best how to protect myself from them? A headmaster may be the titular head of a school faculty and institution, but it’s my understanding that such a person spends most of his time taking care of the administrative end of things, overseeing the running of the school and exercising final say as to any major disciplinary actions against faculty, staff, and students. Dumbledore isn’t going to be teaching any of my classes or anything, so as long as I behave, he won’t have any reason to seek me out or speak to me at all. I don’t want to spend my life hiding – not from the Dark Lord or his supporters, and not from some manipulative old man, either. If the best place I can go to learn how to defend myself is Hogwarts, then that’s where I want to go.”

“You’re a brave boy, Harry Potter, and a smart one, as well. Very well, then. I will return to Hogwarts and immediately begin seeing to it that the full faculty and staff are aware of what Dumbledore has allowed those Muggles to do to you. I believe the first three I will bring back to view your Pensieve memories will be Severus Snape, Pomona Sprout, and Filius Flitwick, as they are the heads of the other three Hogwarts houses,” McGonagall instantly declared, nodding firmly. Then, voice and manner softening a trifle, she added, “I don’t know if anyone has told you this, yet, but the wizarding world has long regard crimes against children as the very worst of all possible offenses. There are too few of us as it is; our children are our most precious resource, and, though we do not believe in coddling our children to the point where they will not be safe in the larger world, we do guard our children zealously. Whatever action the Ministry takes against the Dursleys will be swiftly executed and there will be no chance of reprieve once they have been sentenced. Proceedings like this are always a matter of public record, but I will do my best to see to it that things are kept as quiet as they can be, at Hogwarts. It will not be possible to keep the other Hogwarts students from knowing that you’ve been adopted by the Diggorys because the Muggle relatives that Albus Dumbledore insisted on placing you with were abusive, neglectful, and would have killed you hundreds of time over, if your magic hadn’t done such an excellent job of protecting, healing, and helping you. However, blatant disregard for your right to privacy will not be tolerated. If I have to, I will order the other heads of houses to take whatever steps are necessary to see to it that students are kept from gossiping unduly or at all maliciously and from asking impertinent questions about these proceedings or your private life.”

“I – I would appreciate that, Professor, truly I would,” Harry carefully replied after some quick thinking, “but I really don’t want to be treated any differently than the other students. If it’s not something that would be done for anyone else in this kind of situation, then please, don’t say anything or do anything against the other students unless you absolutely have to. I – I’d rather try to win people over by explaining certain things myself, first. After all, if people know the truth, then they won’t really have a reason to ask a lot of questions or to gossip.” Harry paused for a moment, frowned thoughtfully, and then asked, “I don’t suppose it would be possible to make a copy of the Pensieve – maybe not the whole thing, but enough of it that people would be able to get the gist of things – to go to Hogwarts with me, would it? Not to show to everyone, or even just to anyone who asks, but it would make it easier to explain, to the people I thought were trustworthy, the ones I’d want to know. And maybe it would cut down on the gossip if the heads of houses chose one or two of the most well-respected and trustworthy people from that house for each class level to see it. That way, they could answer questions and correct the gossipers without any teachers ever having to get involved.”

“But there are things in those memories that an enemy might use against you!” Cedric abruptly protested. “Harry, you can’t be serious! Draco Malfoy or some other child of a former Death Eater would just find a way to use your memories to insult and make fun of you!”

“If they’ve been brought up to think that Volde – sorry, that You-Know-Who’s way of doing things is right, then they’re going to find a way to use this for their benefit, anyway,” Harry pointed out with a small shrug. “Isn’t there a way to make it so that the person in the Pensieve lives and experiences the memories, instead of just seeing and hearing them, if the person going into the Pensieve is doing so out of a malicious intent, or something? I’d think it would be hard to make fun of someone for something that you’d had to suffer through, too.”

“Spells can be made to answer to intent, of course, but you can’t possibly mean to make these children suffer through – well, what you did! That would be like torture!”

“I don’t see how, if it were made clear that the Pensieve was charmed to merely show the memories to those who entered it while intending no harm but would make anyone who entered it with the intent of causing any harm or trouble actually relieve the memories as if they were that person’s own. If they’ve been warned and gone into the Pensieve anyway, then they’ll have no one to blame but themselves for whatever they might see or experience. Besides which, it could be good for them. If they’re like Draco Malfoy – and I use him as an example because I met him, earlier, at Madam Malkin’s, and he struck me as being like my cousin, only smarter and therefore potentially more dangerous – or they’re the children of former followers of Vol – sorry, the Dark Lord, then this could be a relatively safe way to teach them, on a level they’ll never be able to forget, that other people have feelings too and will feel pain and bleed when hurt, just like they do, and that they aren’t just – just pawns or playthings that can be tossed around and used up and then thrown away, without it really meaning anything. It would be a way to really teach them that other people are just as real and just as important as they are, and that there are real consequences to acts of violence. If they have to live through the kind of pain that fear and hatred of difference and unreasonable, illogical biases and prejudices can cause, then I’d think that they’d be a lot less likely to hurt others in the same way, later on. They might not become followers of Voldemort – sorry, sorry! The Dark Lord,” Harry hastily corrected him at the reflexive, collective flinch of the others. “Don’t you see? It might not be too late to save some of the people who’re being raised to be – what were they called? Death Eaters? – if they can be taught to understand how much pain hatred causes and how real that is and how irrational and unnecessary the hate and anger and fear all are in the first place! Most people aren’t born evil or hateful – they get that way after awhile because they’re either so self-centered that they forget other people have feelings and matter too or else because they’re so used to doing and thinking and being whatever everybody else around them is that they never bother to really stop and think for themselves until it’s too late and they’re either so filled with fear and anger that they can’t think straight anymore or else they’ve already gone so far down whatever path they’re taking that they lose any hope of ever being able to go back again,” Harry insisted. “If they’ve been brought up to believe that the Dark Lord’s way is right and they’ve never known anything else, then we should be trying to show them that it’s not and giving them reasons they can hold on to as to why it’s not, not just giving up on them and letting the Dark Lord have them. If they’re children, I don’t see why they can’t still be saved! And besides,” he added, frowning slightly, “if people trust Dumbledore as much as you all seem to think they do, then the more of them who know where he put me and just what that decision cost me, the fewer of them will be inclined to keep on blindly trusting him. If enough of them stop trusting him, then maybe Dumbledore won’t be able to hurt anyone else like this again.”

Minerva McGonagall just stared at him for a few moments after that outburst, and Harry was starting to worry that maybe he’d pushed things too far when she put out a hesitant, shaking hand and placed it lightly on his head, in a gesture almost of benediction. “Bless you, child,” she all but whispered, her voice shaky and breathless with suppressed tears. “How did you grow so wise and keep such a forgiving heart, in a place like that?”

While Harry was still gaping dumbly at her, trying to decide whether or not that had been a rhetorical question, Madam Bones surprised him by stepping up to Minerva McGonagall’s right side and quietly but firmly declaring, “You can have one of my old Pensieve’s, Harry. I have several of them: I can afford to donate one for as good a cause as this. I’ll charm a copy of all the memories in the Ministry Pensieve into it, but make it so that they’re sorted into three categories, based on the level of disturbing imagery and language and actual violence in each memory, with the different categories being locked by age and intent. Children under thirteen will only be able to see the first set; children under sixteen will only be able to see the first two; those seventeen and therefore legally of age will be able to see all three; and anyone approaching the Pensieve with malicious intent will automatically be given access to all of the memories.”

“I can charm it so that the Pensieve will function based on the intent of those approaching it,” Auror Scrimgeour added, stepping forward to flank Madam Bones. “I can’t make it so that people with ill intent will actually feel as though they are living through exactly what you lived through, Harry, but if you’ll permit me to see into your mind so that I’ll know what your thoughts were, in those situations, then I can confound them into believing that they’re experiencing those memories and make it so that they’ll have the same thoughts and reactions you did. It’ll take a while to do – probably a week or so, though I really should look into your mind while you’re remembering things today, so I can go ahead and put that into another Pensieve, so I’ll have it all on hand to match up with the memories in your Pensieve later on – but I can and I will do it.”

“How can I let you see my mind?” Harry instantly asked.

“It’s a somewhat obscure and not often used type of magic known as Legilimency. Just let me look you in the eyes as you’re remembering those memories and concentrate on keeping your mind open to me. You don’t know Occlumency, so I should be able to use Legilimency to extract the thoughts and feelings that accompany those memories from your mind, especially if you’re careful not to try to close your mind against me,” Scrimgeour explained.

“Then I’ll do it,” Harry instantly promised.

Scrimgeour nodded in obvious satisfaction. “Just give me a few minutes to go fetch another Pensieve.”

“I, as well,” Madam Bones added. Then, after sharing a look with Scrimgeour, she turned towards Amos and Amabelle Diggory, and added, “We’ll fetch all the necessary paperwork for the adoption, while we’re at it. It’ll require a ruling on the complaint against the Dursleys to be finalized to the point of becoming legally and magically binding, of course, but the evidence is irrefutable enough that I see no problem with securing a ruling within the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours. And if you set up the adoption now, it will take effect automatically with the ruling and, thus, remove the possibility of any outside party attempting to intervene in the proceedings following the viewing of or ruling on the complaint.”

“We would appreciate that, Amelia, yes. We want Harry to be safe,” Amabelle promptly nodded, smiling at the older witch warmly. “Thank you.”






TBC . . .