FicWad

When the two Ministry workers had vanished through a door on the other side of Amos' office from the one they'd used before, Professor McGonagall smiled and nodded at him in obvious approval. "This is a very brave and selfless thing you're doing, Harry. But we'll need the support of the other heads of houses, to implement this plan properly, and that is something that I can and gladly will get for you."

"Should I ask Auror Scrimgeour to send the Pensieve straight to you, then, when he's done with it?" Harry asked, understanding that she was obliquely asking for permission to leave.

"That will be fine," she nodded. Then, turning to step around the end of the transfigured sofa, she walked up and offered him her hand. "It was a pleasure to meet you, Harry, though I could have wished for far better circumstances than these."

Feeling a bit awkward, Harry accepted the hand (which gripped his firmly) and shook it. "Thank you for caring enough to come, and for the help."

"Ah, child, bless your heart, I would have come for you far sooner, if I'd known you were in need," the Deputy Headmistress avowed, blinking rapidly as if to stave off tears. Then, turning aside, she addressed Cedric, telling him quite frankly, "Thank you for doing what I did not, and seeing to it that Harry was safe. That was an act of bravery that makes me wish you were in my house, Cedric Diggory."

"Harry needed help and I could give it. I wouldn't be worthy of my own house, if I hadn't at least tried to help him," Cedric insisted, looking a little startled at the sudden praise.

McGonagall tilted her head to one side, as though in consideration, before smiling at him. "Still. You are a brave lad, with a stout heart. Take care of your brother for me, will you?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Good lad." She nodded, and then turned to face Amos and Amabelle Diggory, who had been being almost surprisingly quiet throughout the discussion of Harry's possible attendance of Hogwarts and the proposed modified Pensieve. "Amos, Amabelle, please feel free to firecall or owl me if you have any questions whatsoever about the safety of your children at Hogwarts or the arrangements that will be made to protect them."

"Of course, Minerva. But if you will, please, might we have a quick word in private, before you go?" Amabelle asked.

"Certainly," the Deputy Headmistress agreed, inclining her head and walking across the room towards the fireplace with them. When they were near enough to the fireplace for Amos to be able to easily reach up and take his jar of Floo powder off of the mantle, Amabelle made an elegant gesture with her left hand that ended in her holding a wand and making a somehow sinuous looking gesture that instantly warded their conversation from everyone else.

While they were talking (and Harry was avoiding trying to look at it, because it gave him an odd sort of feeling, to be able to see them moving their mouths but not to be able to hear so much as the faintest whisper of a single syllable), Cedric leaned in close on the couch and asked him, in a low and gravely serious voice, "Harry, if you mean that, about wanting to save people, then I'm afraid it's going to take more than just a charmed Pensieve to do it. There may've been a good reason back when the school was first founded for setting up a house system at Hogwarts, but whatever that reason was, it's definitely been lost. The system is divisive and it encourages the perpetuation of stereotypes that are limiting and misleading, at the best, and sources of fear and hatred, at the worst. You should hear the way people talk about the houses, Harry. Slytherin is for baby Death Eaters and wannabe politicians with either ambition and no brains or greed and no souls. Ravenclaw is for those who have brains but no common sense or intelligence but no personality or social life to speak of. Gryffindor is for glory-hounds who're all bravery and no brains. Hufflepuff is for the duffers and duds, the ones who aren't good enough to get accepted by one of the other, real houses. It's awful, Harry. The competition between houses is so fierce that students are always getting hurt, and, even if it has always been things that Madam Pomfrey can fix or reverse so far, it seems to get more and more vicious every year. If someone doesn't do something about it soon, I'm afraid that something will happen that not even the Healers at St. Mungo's will be able to put right. And the worst part is that the professors are all either so busy that they don't even notice what's going on right under their noses, or else they're so used to the house rivalries that their attitudes just help egg the students on. The people you want to help are likely to be in any and every house but Hufflepuff. If you want them to really believe they have a fighting chance to make something of their lives other than what their parents expect of them, it's going to take more than just teaching them that other people matter and can feel pain, too. You'll have to give them a safe enough place for them to feel like they'll have a fighting chance if they take a stand. You'll have to show them that there are enough people in enough of the houses who are willing to stand by them and fight both with them and for them that they'll feel safe enough to openly change sides. And I honestly can't see something like that ever happening with the way the houses set up, so that the students are all competing against each other, now."

"If the houses are turning people against each other, then I'll just have to figure out a way to arrange for something else that can help bring them back together again. I don't know what, yet, but I'll think of something," Harry promised.

"We'll think of something, you mean. You don't think I'm going to let you do this on your own, little brother, do you?" Cedric grinned back at him.

Harry couldn't help himself. Despite the lump in his throat, he beamed at Cedric, smiling like a loon, and nodded. "Of course not. I meant we. I'm just not used to saying it, yet, is all."

"Get used to the idea, little brother. I'm a Hufflepuff, and Hufflepuffs believe in sticking together through everything - even attempts at abolishing or at least reorganizing systems that've been in use for close to a thousand years," Cedric replied, grinning at him again, though wryly and lopsidedly, this time.

"Are Hufflepuffs allowed to plot?" Harry asked, tilting his head and letting his mouth quirk into a half smile to show that the question was only half serious.

Cedric gave him a mad grin that Harry was quite certain would have frightened even the boldest Gryffindor alive. "Hufflepuffs are allowed to do and be anything and everything - after all, don't you know, we're nothing more than patched together rejects from all the other houses? - /so long as we remain loyal to each other/."

Harry surprised himself by being able to return the expression, not only without flinching, but so well that Cedric held himself so very still, for a handful of heartbeats, that Harry could tell he was doing so to keep from recoiling. "I'll keep that in mind, brother."

"Keep what in mind, child?" McGonagall asked, looking over at him curiously, the sudden sound of her voice shocking him into snapping his head up so rapidly that his neck popped loudly in the hush following her question.

"Ah. Well, Cedric's promised to teach me all about the things I don't know about the wizarding world, but he things there are some books that would help explain some things better than he could by himself. I think he'll do just fine on his own, personally, but I'm going to keep the books in mind, because I'd really like a chance to go back to a wizarding bookstore long enough to actually look around some," Harry replied, not entirely sure why he wasn't replying with the exact truth, but sure, given that Professor McGonagall was evidently the head of one of the houses he and Cedric had been joking (though mostly seriously) about needing to get rid of, that this kind of response was the safest one to give. He felt a little bad about it, though, so he asked her, very politely, "Are you leaving now, Professor?"

She nodded. "Yes, Harry. There are people I need to speak with, at Hogwarts, and the sooner I begin, the sooner I'll be sure that Hogwarts is truly safe for you."

Harry wanted to thank her for that, but he didn't want to prompt another deluge of words about Dumbledore and how ashamed she was of letting herself be talked into leaving Harry with the Dursleys and being foolish enough to believe Dumbledore every time he'd told her that Harry was doing fine there, so he nodded back and then carefully offered, "If you think it would help, I'm sure Mr. and Mrs. Diggory would let them visit, to talk to me."

"Actually, there is one person I would like to visit you, so that he would have a chance to speak with you, before term starts, and Amos and Amabelle have agreed to let him come see you, not this Friday, but the following," she replied, looking a little startled but pleased to have had a visit from someone else from Hogwarts anticipated. "I will leave your new parents to explain the details of that, though. Good day, Harry. Cedric. I'll see you boys again, September first."

Harry wanted to ask her who it was who would be coming to see him (she looked slightly hesitant, like she wasn't quite sure the visit was a very good idea, which worried him), but he could tell that the Professor was in a hurry to get back to Hogwarts, so he just smiled and nodded and chorused a proper goodbye along with Cedric. And then he tried not to flinch when Amos Diggory suddenly waved his wand at the already transfigured sofa he and Cedric were sitting on and made it expand to roughly twice its size, causing the left arm of the thing to slide out from against Harry's back, so that he and Amabelle could come and sit with them, Amos by Cedric and Amabelle by Harry.

Amabelle smiled at him reassuringly, those oddly pale eyes warmed by the expression, and asked him, "Is everything still alright, Harry? You're not feeling rushed into anything or overwhelmed with too much information, are you?"

"No, ma'am - erhm, Mrs. Diggory. I'm not feeling rushed or overwhelmed. Though I am a little tired. It's been a long day," he replied, ducking his head a little to try to hide the blush he could feel trying to creep up his neck and behind his ears to spread across his face.

"We'll get you home as soon as we can, dear. Cedric has his rooms in one of the towers - his eyrie, as we've always called it - and I hope you don't mind, dear, but Blinky's arranged for another bed to be brought up there, for you. We thought it might be best if you had someone a bit more familiar nearby, should you wake in the middle of the night," she explained.

"But if it's Cedric's room - " Harry began, concerned about somehow presuming.

"/Cedric/," the boy in question cut in, "always shares his room with his friends, whenever they come to visit. Blinky's only doing what she always does, when I bring a friend over to visit. I'm used to the arrangement, Harry. I honestly won't mind sharing my room with you. It's not just one room, really, and it can get kind of lonesome, up there, sometimes."

"Oh. Well, as long as you don't mind, then. I think I'd like that," Harry conceded.

"Good. That's settled, then," Amabelle Diggory nodded, smiling in satisfaction. "I know you've had a full day already, Harry, but I've asked for a good friend of mine who works at St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries, Healer Sirona Finn, to come pay us a visit, so she can cast some diagnostic spells on you and give us a better idea of what we need to do, to start reversing the physical damage the Dursleys have done to you. I understand your magic has been helping to heal you and has somehow either been augmenting or stretching your rations, but accidental magic can only do so much, and Amos and I are worried that you're suffering from malnutrition - something that's much easier to treat and properly reverse with personally tailored potion regimes. It's also rare enough for accidental magic to be able to perform something as complex as healing that we'd like to make sure there isn't any lingering weakness or damage that the magic may not have been able to deal with. Sirona should be waiting for us, by the time we're able to return home, and, if you wouldn't mind, I'd like for her to see you then," she half asked and half explained. "Diagnostic spells are basically noninvasive and usually fairly quick, and it will help us a great deal, since her findings will let us know what we can do to help you."

Harry frowned quietly for several long moments, considering the request. "If you think it's a good idea," he finally warily allowed. "I don't have a lot of experience with doctors - and what little I do have hasn't given me a very high opinion of them - but I'm guessing that Healers aren't quite the same as doctors . . . right?"

"Muggle doctors function like Healers, in that they attempt to cure illnesses and injuries, but Healers use a combination of spellwork, potions, and charms to help others, so their help is much more immediate and efficient than that of doctors. No Healer would have been able to overlook your condition, Harry. Even the simplest of spells for a patient's history would reveal the amount of malnourishment you've suffered and the number of broken bones you've sustained in your life," Amabelle explained, and there was something in her tone that made Harry sure that she held Albus Dumbledore at fault for placing him in a world where he wouldn't have access to a Healer whose spells could have simultaneously revealed and proven the amount of neglect and abuse being inflicted on him by the Dursleys - and frankly, he wasn't sure he blamed her. Harry was beginning to wonder, himself, just what the supposedly wise and powerful wizard could've been thinking, when he made the decision to exile Harry with the Dursleys. Amabelle Diggory continued to speak, though, so he pushed the thought aside. "If your growth has been stunted due to malnourishment - and Harry, dear, forgive me for being blunt, but I have to say that I can't imagine how your size couldn't be related to your malnourishment, especially considering how tall both of your parents were, especially your father - there would be little that Muggle doctors could do, aside from seeing to it that you began receiving a properly nourishing diet. A Healer like Sirona, though, can not only help to make you healthier, now, but actually reverse the damage that's been done to your body."

"I'll see her, then, and do whatever she wants," Harry instantly agreed, thrilled at the prospect that there might be something this Healer could do to make it so that he wasn't so obviously malnourished that he'd probably be the shortest and skinniest person in his class, when he got to Hogwarts. "I'd rather not be this small if I don't have to be."

"Don't worry, lad. We'll have you growing tall as a young tree, just like our Cedric, in no time," Amos Diggory opined, smiling at him reassuringly.

Before he could say or do anything in response, the door opened, and Auror Scrimgeour and Madam Bones came back into the office, trailing Pensieves and stacks of official looking forms and parchments behind them. The conversation came to a halt while Harry concentrated on his memories of all the neglect and abuse he'd suffered at the hands of the Dursleys and Auror Scrimgeour used Legilimency on him so that he could place his memory of Harry's experiences into one Pensieve and Madam Bones filled the other Pensieve with a copy of all the memories in the Ministry's Pensieve so that they'd be able to eventually charm it to work as they'd discussed, earlier. After that, it was back to listening to the two Ministry officials explain things and filling out more official documents. The paperwork for adoption was even more complex than that for the filing of a complaint, as it involved questions and binding oaths not only for the complainant but also the couple petitioning for adoption rights. Thankfully, since Amos Diggory held a fairly high ranking position at the Ministry, the Ministry had a file on him and his family which could stand in as proof of fitness, regarding his and Amabelle's ability to provide for an adopted child financially and their success as actual parents, or else they might have been there all day, while Auror Scrimgeour and Madam Bones went over paperwork requesting the Diggorys' permission to access their financial records and perform background checks on them. Still, the paperwork and accompanying oaths were quite extensive, and, because Amos and Amabelle already had a child and their child had performed a binding ritual with Harry that made them blood brothers, there were also some sections that Cedric had to fill out and swear for. It was easily another two and a half hours before Auror Scrimgeour and Madam Bones declared the paperwork finished, and by then Harry was beginning to regret the fact that he hadn't really finished his lunch.

He was glad of his relatively empty stomach when it came time to leave for the Diggorys' home. Despite assurances that it got easier with practice, Harry found that Flooing to Kirkwold Manse was at least as unsettling as Flooing to the Ministry had been. The person on hand to catch him, though, had something even better than butterbeer - some kind of stomach settling calming draught that tasted indescribably good and left Harry feeling comfortable and loose and almost drowsily peaceful. The pleasant drowsiness was so strong that it barely registered when the witch who'd given him the cup with the potion turned sharply about and irritably snapped at Amabelle, "Dammit, Ama, you said he was small for his age, not that he was smaller than an average eight-year-old! The potion's much too strong for him - he'll probably float right off into something very much like Dreamless Sleep fairly soon, and I'm not going to feed him Pepperup or anything else of the like to wake him back up just because you couldn't be more precise!"

The witch delivering the scolding (obviously Healer Sirona Finn) - a woman of middling height in lime-green robes with a crossed wand-and-bone emblem embroidered on the upper left side of the chest, whose shiny black pixie-bob, grey-green eyes, and skin rather like the color of strongly brewed tea with milk in it somehow made the garishly bright shade of her uniform robes seem natural, like something she would've chosen to wear even if the robes hadn't obviously been her uniform - had a lovely smooth oval face with high cheekbones, a dimpled chin, and a sharp nose that somehow fit her face perfectly, though it likely would've looked oversized on another face, and Harry probably would've guessed (though only if forced, as he was very bad at gauging the ages of other people) her to be in her thirties. Or at least he might have if he hadn't been drowsing contentedly in the chair she'd gently but firmly directed him to sit down moments after giving him the evidently too-strong potion and just before she'd turned around to fuss at Amabelle for not preparing her properly for the extent of Harry's physical underdevelopment.

"I hadn't met him yet then, myself, Rona. If you want someone to fuss at, you may direct your attention towards my husband," Amabelle only replied. "Harry's had a long day. If your potion is going to put him to sleep, then we will, of course, let him sleep. But he's agreed to let you run your diagnostics, so I would appreciate it if you'd go ahead and do those now, so we'll know which potions he'll need when he wakes back up."

The Healer grumbled, but she turned back to Harry and told him, "I'm going to go ahead and run my tests, then. You go ahead and drift, child. I'm sorry the potion I gave you was brewed too strong for you - it was meant simply to settle your stomach and help you calm down, after Flooing - but it won't do any good to try to fight it, and it won't hurt you to go to sleep a little earlier than you might have, otherwise. Here - this is a basic nutrition potion. I brought along several, just in case. You go ahead and drink this down, Harry, since you're missing dinner, and then you can sleep. I'll see to it that you're safely tucked away in bed, after the tests are all done," she promised, reaching into an apparently copious pocket to retrieve a stoppered blue glass bottle and popping the cork before handing the bottle to him, carefully helping to fold his right hand around it before letting go of it completely.

The potion tasted like sweet milk. The last thing Harry would remember, later, from before he let himself slip down from drowsing into sleeping, was the sweetness lingering on his tongue as he let the cool, slick surface of the empty potion bottle slide down from his lips and fall from his hand into the waiting hands of the Healer.

***

Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, current Headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry (formerly professor of transfiguration and head of Gryffindor house), four time nominee (and four time refuser) of the UK Minister for Magic, Supreme Mugwump of the International Confederation of Wizards, Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot, recipient of the Order of Merlin, First Class, for Grand Sorcery, defeater of the Dark Lord Grindelwald, founder (and, thus, head) of the Order of the Phoenix (an organization that had been created expressly to combat the threat posed by the Dark Lord Voldemort and his Death Eaters), and widely reputed to be the most powerful wizard of modern times, was, meanwhile, having a very bad day, indeed.

It had started out as a fairly normal day - one with the potential to be a very good day, indeed, given that he'd sent Hagrid, one of his most loyal followers, out the previous evening to track down the Dursleys, personally give Harry Potter a copy of his Hogwarts admittance letter, and take the boy to Diagon Alley to purchase all of the necessary supplies for the coming school year. Hagrid was a stout-hearted and fairly brave fellow who would have gladly given his life for Dumbledore, but he also had a rather . . . simplistic way of looking at the world, one that would be just the thing to guide young Harry's reintroduction to the wizarding world and shape him into a weapon eventually capable of vanquishing Voldemort once and for all, as foretold by prophecy. With Hagrid there to sing praises of Dumbledore and Gryffindor house and recite the many evils of the current (if still lacking a corporeal body of his own) Dark Lord and Slytherin house, even as he was "rescuing" Harry from his Muggle relatives, telling Harry a little bit about his history, reacquainting him with the wizarding world, and (unbeknownst to Hagrid, of course) offering up Hogwarts as the first and only true place of safety and belonging in all the world for Harry, The-Boy-Who-Lived was practically guaranteed to show up at Hogwarts convinced of Dumbledore's goodness and of the fact that he, Harry Potter, would be a Gryffindor like his parents before him. Having Hagrid withdraw the Philospher's Stone from Gringotts while out shopping with Harry would not only provide bait for a trap, to lure Voldemort out of hiding, but would, handily, give Harry the first in a series of clues that Dumbledore planned for Harry (and whatever close friends he might make) to uncover, to see to it that he was there when Voldemort came out of hiding, so that the boy could see Voldemort for himself and willingly choose to stand against him. From there, it would be easy to manipulate and mold the boy - virtually innocent of magic and of the wizarding world as he would be - into a weapon Dumbledore could wield against Voldemort until finally nothing of the evil creature that had once been Tom Marvolo Riddle remained. Then the whole of the wizarding world would see how Dumbledore and the Light had triumphed over a second Dark Lord (a feat of power not seen in the wizarding world since the days of Merlin), and Dumbledore could finally think about moving on to the next great adventure (death) content in the knowledge that the wizarding world was both safe and truly at peace.

Or so Dumbledore was certainly quite sure would happen, anyway. In fact, he was so sure of the outcome of sending Hagrid to deliver Harry's letter and take him shopping for his school supplies (with a quick stop along the way for a very specific withdrawal from Gringotts), that he planned to spend the day away from Hogwarts, out in Muggle London, shopping for supplies of his own. Thus, he awoke that morning - 31 July 1991 - at his usual summer hour of nine o'clock (summer being a time for rest and relaxation) and substituted his normal attire of brightly colored and embroidered wizarding robes and (brimless) hat for a suit of midnight blue velvet, charming his long beard to a much shorter appearance and his hair into a length just past his shoulders before tying it back into a tail at the nape of his neck. A plush velvet suit and ponytail wouldn't make him blend in unobtrusively in Muggle London, of course, but then, that wasn't the point of the disguise. He had a persona he'd pieced together decades ago for the Muggle world, and it was this eccentric and wealthy gentleman who was known and expected among the Muggle shops of London that Dumbledore frequented every year, before school started, during both Christmas break and Easter holiday, and when school had let out for the summer. So he hummed absently to himself as he put on the velvet suit (the jacket of which was shaped more like an old-fashioned frock coat than a modern suit jacket, though he wore a plain white button-down under it and the matching vest, refraining from anything with lace since he'd never quite mastered the trick of keeping lace-trimmed sleeves from either dragging through his food or dangling into his tea) and headed down to the Great Hall, where he reminded Minerva McGonagall that he would be out of the castle for most of the day and cheerfully consumed an enormous breakfast before departing Hogwarts for London via a Portkey that deposited him in an empty closet in the underground that had been charmed against ever being found or opened by anyone who wasn't in possession of a Portkey keyed to its location.

Dumbledore took his Muggle shopping seriously. In his study of alchemy under Nicholas Flamel (the first and only alchemist known to successfully created a Philosopher's Stone), he had discovered a variant to the alchemist process that produced a Philosopher's Stone that resulted in a stone that could transform other metals (and even items that had been transfigured into metal) into not gold but rather silver and which produced not the Elixir of Life (which granted drinkers ageless immortality) but rather an extremely potent restorative and regenerative potion, one that could refresh and rejuvenate the body to the sort of optimum peak of health, energy, and resilient youth that witches and wizards generally enjoyed during their second and third decades of life. The effects of this potion were long-lasting, one tablespoonful producing rejuvenation for a full year, and were, moreover entirely internal, meaning that the body did not visually seem to be any different after consuming the potion than before. The effects much easier to hide than the ageless immortality granted by the Philosopher's Stone's Elixir of Life, which physically unaged those who drank it to the point of full maturity and then preserved them, agelessly and indefinitely, so long as a tablespoonful of the Elixir was consumed once every thirty days. Dumbledore had been taking the rejuvenation potion created by his Wizard's Stone (as he called his creation) ever since 1954, when he'd first discovered its properties, and no one suspected a thing. Of course, since his metabolism ran quite a bit faster than it otherwise would have, given his superb condition (plus the fact that his metabolism had always been inclined to be rather quick), Dumbldore needed to consume roughly twice the number of calories as anyone else his age would have. His fondness for Muggle sweets was a clever way of keeping anyone from realizing just how much he truly ate. In addition to the cases and cases of candy and chocolate and confectionary he bought every year from Muggle London, Dumbledore also purchased large amounts of tinned food, cereal, and bushels and bushels of fresh vegetables and fruit that he was then magically preserved so that he could snack on it all the whole year through without anyone else ever being the wiser.

It was a very clever arrangement (or so Dumbledore believed), and he'd never had any trouble with his shopping, and so he was taken quite by surprise when the charms Dumbledore had placed on Harry Potter in the aftermath of his parents' deaths (and the subsequent creation of the blood protection that his mother's willing sacrifice of her life for Harry's had worked into her young son's very blood to modify that blood protection into a shield that would keep Harry safe to the point where he could not physically be touched or harmed by her killer, Voldemort, so long as he lived with the Dursleys - or, specifically, with Petunia, who was the Harry's aunt by blood and therefore tied to him by virtue of the blood bond she'd shared with Lily, Harry's mother and her sister - for no less than one full month out of the year) quite suddenly all tore violently free from their anchoring point (Petunia's presence within the Dursley household) and flowed down through some other person in order to locate and then reattach themselves to an entirely new and apparently somehow dual anchoring point. Of course, by the time the protective charms had all finished tearing themselves free of Petunia and the Dursley household, the backlash from their break with the anchor Dumbledore had originally given them had rendered Dumbledore deeply unconscious, so he missed the way they migrated down through another person to a new anchor. He missed quite a bit over the next several hours of unconsciousness - including his transport, via ambulance, to the nearest Muggle hospital, where the doctors first ran a full battery of tests on him, trying to determine just what had made him lose consciousness and how they could best treat it and so help him regain consciousness, and then began to order a second round of tests, to try to account for the less than normal results of some of the first round of tests - and, when he eventually regained consciousness, lost close to another two hours, as he charmed and Obliviated his way through the hospital staff so that he'd be able to leave without leaving behind any potentially incriminating evidence about his abnormally rejuvenated body.

By the time Dumbledore finally got out of the hospital and was able to make his way back to Hogmeade and, thence, to Hogwarts, Minerva McGonagall basically had the entire castle up in arms against him, given that he was the one who'd decided to leave Harry Potter with his Muggle relatives, insisting that it would be for the child's own good, and the now copious evidence that the Dursleys had proceeded both to neglect and abuse the child immediately upon his acceptance into the household. Dumbledore, frankly, was shocked. He'd known that the Dursleys didn't like magic - had, in fact, chosen to place Harry with his Muggle relatives precisely so that he would have a less than comfortable childhood, so that he would be that much more inclined to not only love the wizarding world but be loyal to those who first brought him back into contact with the wizarding world - but the wards tied to Harry's blood protection were contingent upon his aunt's willingness to protect and care for him, and he frankly couldn't even begin to imagine how the wards could have held for nearly a decade if she had not only permitted by actively contributed to Harry's abuse as well as general neglect of the child. Neglect by itself, yes - one could be willing to provide for all of another person's necessary basic needs and still not want to have much of anything to do with that other person - but neglect and actual physical abuse/? He simply couldn't understand it! Besides, how in Merlin's name could the /Dursleys (who, by all accounts, weren't all that particularly bright and, moreover, weren't terribly inclined to pay for Harry to ever go to any Muggle doctors) have ever been able to hide that kind of abuse, not only from their regular neighbors and Harry's teachers at school but from Arabella Figg as well, the naturally nosey Squib woman who'd volunteered to move in just down the street from the Dursleys for the express purpose of keeping an eye on Harry as he grew up? It just didn't make any sense! So he was quite sure that they had to be exaggerating, at least at first, and he headed off for the Ministry for the express purpose of putting a stop to whatever proceedings Harry had evidently talked Amos Diggory into initiating for him.

He was therefore quite stunned to discover that Madam Amelia Susan Bones, the Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement herself, had already called an emergency meeting of the Wizengamot, for the express purpose of hearing testimony on the matter from the Dursley family, who had already been arrested by Rufus Scrimgeour, the Head of the Ministry's Auror Office. He was even more flabbergasted to find himself barred from the hearing - not because he had shown up too late to hear the opening statements, but because there was a second motion before the Wizengamot to investigate whether or not Dumbledore had been knowingly complicit in the abuse and neglect the Dursley family had inflicted on Harry Potter. It would very likely never come to that, of course - the current Minister for Magic, Cornelius Fudge, was adamantly opposed to the notion that Lord Voldemort was anything other than one hundred percent dead and gone, and he would never risk allowing someone to testify under Veritassium who irrefutably knew, as Dumbledore did, that the Dark Lord had lost only his body that fateful Halloween night - but just the knowledge that Dumbledore's reputation (and therefore his life) and all of his plans could easily be ruined by such a move on the Wizengamot's part made him break out into a cold sweat, fear twisting his stomach into knots. Whether he was in any real danger of being charged with anything by the Wizengamot or not, Dumbledore knew that nothing good could come of these proceeding, not for him. Whatever else eventually came of this, his reputation and, thus, his political power and personal clout in the wizarding world was all going to be damaged, possibly irreparably. Former Death Eater Lucius Malfoy might even be able to convince he school's board of governors to fire or at least suspend him, and how was he going to see to it that his plans for Harry - and, thus, the plans he'd made for the eventual safety and security of the wizarding world at large - were carried out if he was no longer Headmaster of Hogwarts or, even worse, if these events convinced Harry Potter that Dumbledore wasn't to be trusted and obeyed?

The thought alone was almost enough to send Dumbledore into a panic. It might actually be better to testify under Veritassium - even if the drug would reveal that he had chosen to place Harry with the Dursleys partially because he knew that the child would have a hard life there and, thus, be more malleable as well as more inclined to love and be protective towards the wizarding world once he'd gotten to Hogwarts - if only because then it would be irrefutably known that Lord Voldemort was still a very real threat and that Harry was not only a symbol of hope for the previous struggle against the Dark Lord that Tom Marvolo Riddle had become but a weapon for the coming struggle as well and the wizarding world's only hope against Volemort's return and ultimate rise to absolute power. Sybill Trelawney had made half a dozen different true prophecies about Harry and Voldemort - all of them variants of the first (and only officially recorded, since he'd hired her directly after she'd given the first, for the express purpose of keeping her tucked away at Hogwarts where no one else besides him who would be inclined to take her prophesying seriously would be likely to overhear her, should she foresee something else that might be of use to the Light in the coming struggle), all of them making it increasingly clear that the wizarding world and perhaps even the entirety of the world itself was doomed, unless Harry kept Voldemort from obtaining his goals - and the knowledge of those prophecies alone would likely terrify most of the British (and quite possibly also the European) wizarding world into uniting openly behind Dumbledore and Harry, though it would also, unfortunately, reveal to the Death Eaters the fact that their former Lord was still in existence and that he had a very good chance of succeeding in those goals of conquest and purification, if not stopped by Harry. Unfortunately, it would also reveal the paramount importance of Harry (and a certain quality of his that Dumbledore didn't want anyone else knowing about) to Voldemort and his followers and so put Harry in even more danger than he would be because of Voldemort's vindictiveness and his status as The-Boy-Who-Lived. That was something that Dumbledore simply couldn't risk, and it left him in something of a quandary. What could he possibly do to fix this, when his choices all somehow seemed doomed to make things worse than they already were?

His choices, in the matter of Harry Potter, had never been easy ones. When James Potter, one of two possible heirs to the bloodline of Godric Gryffindor, first began attending Hogwarts in September 1971, Dumbledore had instantly recognized his potential. Unlike the other possible heir of Godric Gryffindor (a distant cousin of James' by the name of Alice Gentry, who would later go on to marry a fellow member of Gryffindor house named Frank Longbottom), in terms of raw power, James had it in him to become a wizard of Dumbledore's equal, and Dumbledore had hoped that this, at last, might be the one who would be able to stand with him against Voldemort and defeat the Dark Lord. He had watched over James closely during his early years at Hogwarts, and, though he and his friends had managed a few truly incredible feats of magic (including three of them teaching themselves to become Animagi, so that they might safely accompany the fourth in their animal forms during his monthly transformations into a werewolf, and the making of a most extraordinarily detailed map of the castle and surrounding grounds), by the time James was ready to take his O.W.L.s, Albus knew the boy's strengths and weaknesses inside out, and, while it was true that boy's power was significant, he knew that James' ability to use that power would never make him a true threat to Voldemort. Still, it was possible that James and his friends were strong enough and inventive enough that they might somehow prove instrumental to Voldemort's eventual defeat, and so Dumbledore continued to watch them and to do his best to secure their loyalty for himself, so that Voldemort hopefully couldn't win them over to his side. When James was sixteen, a perfect opportunity presented itself. Sirius Black, the most impetuous of James' friends, thought that sending a rival to the Shrieking Shack where another of their friends, Remus Lupin, was sheltering during his monthly transformation into a werewolf would scare the rival into finally leaving them be and so constitute a good prank. If not for James' quick thinking, that boyhood rival, Severus Snape, likely would have been killed by the transformed Remus. And if that had happened, Remus would've been executed by the Ministry as a dangerous beast, since werewolves who harmed humans were treated like wild animals and not even given the benefit of a hearing, much less a fair trial.

In the aftermath of the supposed prank, Dumbledore had quickly realized that this was a way to further cement the loyalty of three of his most powerful students. By giving Sirius a slap on the wrist instead of the expulsion that he truly deserved, he made certain that the boy and his friends would forever be grateful to him. Though James and Remus were furious at their friend for taking such a terrible risk with Remus' life, they knew that revealing Sirius' "prank" for the crime it so nearly became would have been disastrous for Remus, so they were relieved at and thankful for Dumbledore's decision. He was only too happy to have the three Gryffindor students (and even their fourth, far less powerful and intelligent, tagalong friend) grateful to him, but it was James' personal sense of indebtedness to him for helping his friends that gave Dumbledore an extra twinkle in his eye. With James and his friends all likely to become members of the Order of the Phoenix on their graduation from Hogwarts, it was very likely that they would bring with them the cream of that graduating class, such was their popularity at school. More members for the Order meant more soldiers in the war against Voldemort and his Death Eaters, and, as far as Dumbledore was concerned, that was always a good thing. The fact that James was in love with Lily Evans, a Muggle-born witch ((though Dumbledore happened to know that she was actually descended from a Squib of the now extinct Donovan line, and therefore extremely distantly related to Rowena Ravenclaw, though Lily lacked enough of Rowena's blood to ever qualify as her heir) and someone who would always be in danger so long as Voldemort was alive, only made it that much more certain that James and his friends (and quite possibly also Lily Evans, perhaps the most inventive and powerful witch for charms-work that Hogwarts had seen in at least fifty years) would join the Order and fight against Voldemort. Still, to encourage them to remain together, he made Lily and James Head Girl and Boy in their seventh year, and he was thoroughly pleased when, by the end of the year, the two were engaged to be married.

He soon found himself looking back on his happiness over James and Lily's engagement and subsequent marriage with a certain fond, if sorrowful, wistfulness, though. Voldemort was winning the war. Within a year of that marriage, there was no longer any doubt as to the fact that they were losing. Although Dumbledore was technically more powerful and, generally speaking, more learned than Voldemort, the Dark Lord's specific mastery over the Dark Arts made him a formidable opponent. With his Death Eaters willing and eager to inflict ever more grotesque and bloody atrocities in his name, the public was terrified to take a stand against him. No matter what Dumbledore and the Order of the Phoenix did, it was quickly becoming clear that they couldn't seem to overpower Voldemort; the best they could achieve was an uneasy stalemate between the Dark Lord personally and Dumbledore himself. The Dark Lord wouldn't attack Hogwarts, but anywhere and everywhere else seemed to be fair game. The death toll and the list of the vanished was rising not monthly or weekly but /daily/. Just when Dumbledore was beginning to lose hope, a desperately needed miracle occurred. During her interview for the recently vacated position of Divination, a young witch and Seer by the name of Sybill Trelawney spontaneously entered into a trance and prophesied the birth of a baby who could eventually vanquish Voldemort. Incredibly relieved to learn that it was actually possible for Voldemort to be defeated but at the same time also extremely worried, as he wasn't at all sure how they would ever be able to keep Voldemort from finding out about and either killing or seizing the child for his own purposes, Dumbledore instantly began trying to come up with a way to keep the child safe until he was old enough to fight. Eventually, analysis of the prophecy narrowed the possibilities down to two children, both of whose parents were members of the Order of the Phoenix and both of whose parents included a potential heir of Godric Gryffindor. Dumbledore was tempted to assume that the child had to be James and Lily's, but knew there would be no way of knowing for sure until Voldemort in some way marked one of the children out "as his equal." So he did what he could to provide safety for both children and their parents, and settled in to wait and see what happened.

On a personal and purely selfish level, Dumbledore was vexed and grieved by the deaths of James and Lily Potter, who he considered to be two of his brightest stars; however, the events of Halloween 1981 neatly solved some of his more thorny and immediate problems. The question as to which baby was the actual child of prophecy was definitively answered, for one thing, and Voldemort was dealt a nearly fatal blow, one that not only rendered him bodiless and stripped him of most of his considerable personal strength, but also ripped the heart out of the complex web of alliances that had been holding his Death Eaters together, and so brought hope and heart to the Order of the Phoenix and the Ministry as well as the rest of their poor beleaguered country. Dumbledore knew perfectly well that Voldemort wasn't gone for good, of course, but the partial defeat not only immediately caused morale to skyrocket and promised to bring about an eventual end (or at least a rather long pause) to the atrocities of his Death Eaters, it also would hopefully delay Voldemort's plans sufficiently for young Harry to grow up enough to be ready to face him by the time the Dark Lord regained enough of his power to reappear and engage the battle again. Since Voldemort's defeat and destruction was his highest priority, recent events also made things a great deal simpler for Dumbledore, as he knew it would now be possible for him to exert much more influence and control over the prophesied child. He had always known that the chosen child would have to be extremely powerful, if that child was going to be able to defeat Voldemort, and Harry and the other possibility (Neville Longbottom, born one day prior to Harry, to parents who had also defied Voldemort thrice) had both proven to potentially be a great deal stronger than the average magical child. It was impossible, of course, to get a clear reading on a child's potential strength until that child was at least five full years of age (even if proof of a child's magic might not manifest until seven, eight, or even nine years of age), but Dumbledore had been impressed enough by the tentative readings of both boys that he immediately starting giving some serious thought to the notion of placing at least a partial block on both of them, while they were still too young to use their magic, to hide their true level of strength from potential opponents.

With Harry revealed to be the child of prophecy, Frank and Alice Longbottom practically begged Dumbledore to place a block on their child's magic, so that Neville wouldn't appear to be powerful enough to be worth the attention of the remaining Death Eaters. Dumbledore agreed to place a time-locked block (one that would block roughly a third of his power and naturally begin to wear off after half a dozen years or so and then gradually continued to fade until it wore away to nothing within the next half a dozen or so years) on the boy - one that unfortunately couldn't save the boy's parents from the attentions of some viciously vindictive Death Eaters, who were frantic over the disappearance of the Dark Lord and, unfortunately, knew just enough about the prophecy (Voldemort having been told its first half by a Death Eater turned spy for the Order of the Phoenix) to suspect that the Longbottoms and their child might have had something to do with Voldemort's abrupt disappearance - just to be on the safe side, after it occurred to him that a wizard as potentially powerful as Neville seemed to be capable of becoming might one day prove a boon to their side, especially if the enemy underestimated his strength and ability. He had actually discovered the blood protection Lily had left Harry earlier that same evening (having run from Hogwarts to Hogsmeade to get outside of the castle's wards and then Apparated straight to Godric's Hollow and the Potters' house the moment the alarms he'd set to their wards went down and, thus, been the first to arrive at the scene of devastation), when he was examining Harry to make sure the child had taken no obvious harm from his meeting with the Dark Lord. He also discovered that Harry, in addition to being "marked" as Voldemort's equal with a jagged cut (that would quite obviously eventually turn into a curse scar) shaped like a lightning bolt, was quite suddenly noticeably stronger that he had been only a few short months earlier, having apparently also received some of Voldemort's rarer abilities along with his marking.

It had been relatively easy to weave an extra layer of spells into the charms needed to modify the blood protection Lily had given to Harry into something that would protect him from Voldemort's touch, and he had been sure that it was the right thing to do. Lily's grandparents were deceased and her parents had been killed the previous year - accidental collateral damage in a rather publicly staged Death Eater raid on Muggle London - so her older sister, Petunia, was the only remaining living blood relative with ties close enough to Lily to act as an anchor for that blood protection. To turn that protection into a self-renewing shield while Harry was still a child, he had to send the boy to live with Petunia and her Muggle family, whether Petunia and Vernon Dursley were particularly fond or even tolerant of magic or not. If he wanted to continue keeping the child safe from Voldemort, Dumbledore had no choice but to send him to live with relatives who would very likely neither understand nor be particularly fond of the boy. Placing a block on his magic had seemed like an act of mercy. After all, if enough of Harry's magic was blocked off from his use, odds were good that he wouldn't be able to manifest enough accidental magic for the Dursleys to be sure if he were going to grow up to be a wizard. If they thought that Harry was like them, then perhaps they'd be more inclined to treat the boy as if he were their own, instead of just tolerating his presence in their house. So he'd placed a block on the boy - stronger than the one he later placed on Neville Longbottom, true, but otherwise designed in much the same matter, so that the block would naturally start wearing off in about half a dozen years and would be entirely gone after another half a dozen years, giving the boy complete access to his full power no sooner than the school year following his thirteenth birthday and possibly not even until one or two years later. By then, Dumbledore reasoned, the child would be about halfway through his magical education at Hogwarts and his peers would be used to thinking of the boy as a much less powerful wizard, giving him an additional edge when the time came to stand against Voldemort.

Dumbledore's conscience had pained him over these decisions, of course. Not only was he deliberately keeping two innocent children from growing up and beginning to attend Hogwarts with the full measure of their power at their command, he was doing it without their knowledge or permission. He was also knowingly sending one of those two young boys to live with Muggle relatives who would almost certainly fear and quite possibly even dislike him for his wizarding abilities and the way they would perceive him as being different from them. And he was ignoring his instincts in order to allow a young man who, despite all the evidence to the contrary, could've been innocent of the charges brought against him to be sentenced to a lifetime in Azkaban prison. Sirius Black, the impetuous youth whose not very well thought out prank could have resulted in the deaths of not one but two of his fellow Hogwarts students, was the one among the Potters' friends who, so far as everyone knew, had been chosen to be their Secret-Keeper, when Lily and James had placed their home in Godric's Hollow under the protection of a Fidelius Charm - a powerful and complex charm that allows someone or something to be hidden away, often in plain sight, for an indefinite period of time, with the actual location of and ability to find the hidden place, people, or items being a secret known only to one person, the Secret-Keeper. A Fidelius Charm is so powerful that even those to whom the secret has been told cannot reveal what they know: only the Secret-Keeper has the power to divulge the secret and, if a Secret-Keeper dies before the secret is shared, then that dies with that person. When Dumbledore had suggested the spell to Lily, it had seemed like the perfect solution to keeping the location of the Potters and their son safe from Voldemort. The spell was so powerful that not even the Potters themselves would be able to reveal the location of their home, if captured and tortured by Voldemort and his Death Eaters. Only their chosen Secret-Keeper would ever be able to reveal the location of their home (and, thus, their son), and the Secret-Keeper's knowledge could not be taken by force. It had to be given freely, since the Secret-Keeper had to be willing to actually take the person in question to the location of the secret and then talk that person through the process of finding what was hidden. Otherwise, even with the knowledge that something or someone hidden was in that specific spot, the person searching would be redirected past what was hidden by the spell.

The only way Voldemort could have found the Potters would have been if their Secret-Keeper had willingly decided to not only tell him their location but to physically take him there to them. Sirius Black was widely reputed to be the one chosen as their Secret-Keeper. Although Dumbledore wasn't convinced that Sirius had actually been their Secret-Keeper (as he was quite certain that Sirius would have cheerfully died for James, before sharing their secret location), he knew that Sirius would never agree to allow Harry to be raised by Lily's sister, and Sirius was also Harry's godfather and James and Lily's first choice as Harry's legal guardian, if anything should happen to them both. Legal guardianship gave Sirius the right to simply claim Harry as his own and keep him with him, whether such an arrangement would be safe for the child or not. Sirius had lost none of his impetuousness. He would doubtlessly insist that he could keep Harry safe enough from Voldemort's remaining Death Eaters and that the boy would so benefit from growing up in a house where someone loved and supported him that it would somehow make up for the lack of protection that the shield modified from the blood protection given him by Lily would have otherwise given him. And if this were any other boy than the child of prophecy, then Dumbledore would have agreed with him and let Sirius simply take the boy in (though he also would have insisted on becoming Sirius' Secret-Keeper for a new Fidelius Charm, given that Voldemort's disembodiment currently made it almost impossible for him to choose to break the unofficial truce between them and so put Hogwarts at risk, as Lily had unfortunately persuasively argued might happen if the Potters were to use Dumbledore as their Secret-Keeper). But this was Harry Potter, The-Boy-Who-Lived and the child marked as Voldemort's equal, the one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord. Dumbledore needed to be able to control Harry enough to keep him safe and make sure that he grew up into a wizard who would be willing to do anything to defeat and destroy Voldemort. With a little encouragement to Bartemius Crouch, Sr., though, Sirius would be in Azkaban before too many questions could be asked. And with Sirius out of the way, Albus could easily see to it that Harry was placed with the Dursleys.

In the end, he could see no way around the choice staring him in the face, no matter how much his conscience might twinge over it. 1 November 1981 was, therefore, an extremely busy day for Albus Dumbledore. He Apparated out of Godric's Hollow directly to the Longbottoms' house to tell them the news that the child of prophecy wasn't their son, where he ended up giving in to Alice's pleas and placing a nonpermanent block on Neville's power. He then quickly made his way back to Hogwarts, where he made sure that Hagrid would go and pick up Harry before Sirius had a chance to get to him. A little bit later in the day, he discovered from Bartemius that Sirius had not only been captured but was accused of killing Peter Pettigrew (the other of James' friends from Hogwarts, the one Dumbledore had always dismissed as weaker than the other boys) and a dozen Muggle bystanders in addition to his betrayal of the Potters to Voldemort. Bartemius was furious and had already arranged for Sirius to be sent directly to Azkaban (without even a fair hearing, much less a proper trial) before he reported to Albus. With the thorny issue of Sirius Black's guardianship of Harry Potter neatly resolved for him, Dumbledore met with Minister for Magic Millicent Bagnold and got himself appointed as Harry's magical guardian by pointing out that there weren't any magical relatives, legal guardians, or even godparents who would be able to assume the role, given that (with Sirius in Azkaban and Peter apparently slain) Harry's only remaining godfather, Remus Lupin, was a registered werewolf and forbidden by law to have or to raise children. During this talk, he explained his plan to modify the blood protection that Lily's willing sacrifice had passed on to Harry into blood-anchored wards to secure the boy's safety at his aunt's home. It took some convincing, but he wasn't Albus Dumbledore for nothing, and the Minister eventually saw that, while it was not an ideal solution by any stretch of the imagination, it would keep Harry (now a symbol of hope to the entire wizarding nation) safe, and not only against the threat of Voldemort's return but also against any of his remaining Death Eaters who might have been tempted to try to find the child to revenge themselves on him for his part in their Lord's disappearance.

After finishing his business at the Ministry, Dumbledore wrote a letter to the Dursleys to explain what had happened (if only partially. After all, he didn't want to frighten them into trying to refuse to foster Harry, and honestly, as long as they kept their heads down, it wasn't likely that they would attract the attention of any former Death Eaters who would be powerful enough to get through the protective wards that the Ministry was going to put up around their property for the express purpose of shielding them from possible negative reprisals from the wizarding world for fostering Harry Potter) and why they were being asked to take Harry in, and then went to meet Hagrid in Little Whinging to leave said letter with Harry at the Dursleys. Thankfully, by then enough time had passed that he'd been able to think up some other, more innocuous reasons to explain why he'd chosen to place Harry with his Muggle relatives instead of trying to find a good wizarding family willing to take him in, as he was almost immediately forced to convince an unexpected and surprisingly argumentative Minerva McGonagall that it would be best for Harry to grow up with the Dursleys. Playing on her distrust of fame, he stressed that Harry needed to grow up untouched by the fame that doubtlessly would otherwise attend him in the wizarding world, and eventually talked her around (or at least to the point of accepting that he knew what he was doing). After that, his tasks were finally complete, and Dumbledore was able to return to Hogwarts and enjoy the parties celebrating Voldemort's disappearance and apparent defeat at the hands of a child barely fifteen months old. Since it would be almost a decade before Harry was old enough to attend Hogwarts, it meant that he had nearly the same amount of time to plan for Harry's return to the wizarding world. Voldemort wasn't likely to regain enough of his power to be able to try anything before that, so Dumbledore had plenty of time to think things through. And he planned on doing exactly that - and enjoying the relative peace and quiet while he could.





TBC . . .