Disclaimer: It's JKR's, not mine. All of the characters, settings, and ideas from the books belong to JK Rowling. I have never, and will never profit from these writings. The only things that are mine are the parts of the plot differing from the books, any original characters, and the characterization of Hermione's parents.
AN: This chapter is the most graphic of the entire story, and contains abuse. If you don't like it or don't want to read it, you can scroll past the italicized sections (which contain it) and infer what happened on your own. This version has been toned down for posting here on Portkey. The original version can be accessed through the homepage link in my profile (it goes to my story at ficwad.com)
Chapter 1: The Search
Emergency Order meeting - Hogwarts, Great Hall - 1 July 1991
The Head table had been expanded to fit all of the members of the Order of the Phoenix. Dumbledore had called an emergency meeting for the evening. He looked across the table as the last members straggled into the hall. Some of the Professors at Hogwarts were members, including Minerva McGonagall, Filius Flitwick, Pomona Sprout, Severus Snape, and Septima Vector. Minerva and Filius had been members since the Order started. Severus, sitting at the table with his trademark sneer prominent on his face, had joined during the war with Voldemort as a spy in Voldemort's ranks. Pomona and Septima had been accepted as members in the years after Voldemort's defeat.
Arthur and Molly Weasley were in attendance, as was their son, Bill. Their other older son, Charlie, was in Romania, working on a dragon preserve. Auror Kingsley Shacklebolt was there as well as several other Aurors, including Hestia Jones who attended Hogwarts at the same time as James and Lily and been a close friend of Lily's, and a few Hit Wizards. Other original members including Dedalus Diggle and Elphias Doge were there, as well as the paranoid, now-retired Auror, Alastor Moody. Andromeda Tonks and Ted Tonks sat near Kingsley. Their daughter, Nymphadora, was a Metamorphmagus who had just graduated from Hogwarts was beginning her first year of her Auror training this fall. Andromeda, a cousin of Sirius Black, was able to give the Order members a different view of the world, having grown up in the Black household which was one of the oldest families associated with the Dark Arts. Ted Tonks, a Muggleborn wizard, worked for Lloyds of London in their Wizarding branch, because of his knowledge of both worlds. He helped the members of the Order in their investing, and he was also responsible for managing the payroll.
There were several dozen other members that were not as involved in Order affairs also seated at the table, including Hagrid, who sat at the table with eyes red from crying. Finally, Albus' eyes came to rest on the man he knew would take the news the worst. Remus Lupin. Remus was a childhood friend of James's, and had fought in court to get custody of Harry after Sirius was arrested, but he had been denied guardianship because he was a werewolf, and there were strict laws against adopting if you were a werewolf.
After the last Order member was seated, Dumbledore cleared his throat to get their attention. "Thank you, everyone, for coming this evening. I am afraid that everything you hear this meeting will be almost entirely bad news."
At this, several people around the table exchanged worried glances. Their meetings hadn't been filled with bad news since Voldemort had been defeated. "Does it have something to do with You-Know-Who?" Arthur Weasley asked.
"No. This has to do with …. Harry Potter." Albus said. The entire table immediately erupted in nervous chatter when he said this.
"What, Albus? What has happened?" Asked a grave-looking Remus Lupin, his voice cutting through the chatter.
"Today, first Hagrid, and then both Hagrid and I went to the household of the Dursleys to make sure that Harry was going to come to Hogwarts this year. He had not answered our letters, so I believed that he thought it was a joke or a prank. When Hagrid was told that Harry did not live there, he came back to Hogwarts to talk to me. I took him with me along with some Veritaserum, and we discovered that Harry has not lived in that house for over five years. When he did, he was forced to live in a small cupboard under the stairs. And… ." He paused here to wait until the room quieted down. "We used the Veritaserum and discovered that about six years ago, his uncle beat him rather severely, drove him to London, and left him laying unconscious in an alley."
Remus and most of the other Order members were pale. McGonagall spoke up with a shaking voice. "Albus, I told you! I warned you that they hated magic. I told you not to go against Lily's wishes and put Harry with those monsters. I even offered to take him in myself."
Dumbledore, seeming older than he ever had before, looked down at the table. "Yes, Minerva, putting him there was the worst mistake of my life. I just could not believe that anyone could treat a child the way Harry was treated, especially their own nephew."
Remus interrupted. "Yes, Albus, we know you made a serious mistake, which several of us tried to keep you from making. But let's focus on what is more important now: Is Harry alive?" He asked hopefully.
"I am afraid that I do not know, Remus. The wards that I used only tell me if he is alive when he is on the Dursley's property. There is a chance that he is dead, but I remain hopeful that he will be found alive, living somewhere in or around London."
"We should start searching for him right away," said Shacklebolt from the far end of the table.
Albus nodded. "We will use the rest of this meeting to plan out our searching strategy, but first I believe we should decide how to approach him once we find him. I believe it would be best if at first only female members talk to him until we can ascertain his state of mind," Albus said, looking at Hestia, Minerva, and Andromeda.
Molly Weasley looked up and asked, "Why only female members, Albus?
"I am coming to that. As I said before, Severus and I went to the Dursley home and questioned them under Veritaserum." He waved his hand, levitating his own chair to the side. Behind where it sat was a large Pensieve. "I have put my memory of the questioning into the Pensieve, along with one I extracted from Vernon Dursley."
He tapped the side of the large Pensieve with his wand. An enlarged image appeared above the Pensieve. This type of Pensieve was often used in court cases to display a memory to a large group of people, eliminating the need to crowd around it and touch it to see the memory.
A sharp crack of displaced air and magical energy disrupted the peaceful neighbourhood of Privet Drive as Dumbledore Side-Along Apparated Hagrid onto the drive in front of Number Four. Dumbledore walked to the front door and knocked, followed by Hagrid who was saying, "Do ye think 'arry is alrigh'?"
"I am sure everything is fine. I believe they lied to you before for some reason, so that is why I got some Veritaserum from Severus" Veritaserum, the strongest available truth potion, was a restricted substance because of Ministry laws, and it could only be administered by a certified Potions Master or Alchemist. Dumbledore, famous for his alchemy work with Nicholas Flamel, received his certification many years before the rise of Voldemort.
The door swung open and the large form of Vernon Dursley filled the doorway. "Yes?" He asked politely, and then, upon seeing their wizard robes scowled and said, "What do you freaks want? I already told this other freak that you have no right to invade my house like this."
"Mr. Dursley, I understand that you do not like us coming to your home, but I am afraid that we have something of utmost importance to discuss. Now if you will just invite us in, we can get this over as quickly as possible." Dumbledore said as firmly as possible.
Vernon grumbled and looked for a moment like he was just going to slam the door in their faces, but he slowly backed out of the doorframe, allowing Dumbledore and Hagrid into the house. "Okay, but it better be quick." Vernon growled.
He led them to the living room where they seated themselves in chairs across the coffee table from the sofa that Vernon heaved himself onto. "Now Mr. Dursley, I would like to know the whereabouts of Harry Potter."
"I already told your freak here: I don't know! The little freak ran off a few years ago! Good riddance, I say," said Vernon, his face slowly turning puce as he ranted.
"Mr. Dursley, please calm down. Perhaps you could tell us more about what happened over some tea?" Dumbledore said calmly in the face of the man's anger.
He pulled out his wand and conjured a tea set on top of the coffee table. Hagrid poured out a cup for everyone, while Dumbledore levitated several disillusioned drops of Veritaserum into Vernon's cup. Vernon looked warily at the full tea cup in front of him but then picked it up and began to sip at it.
Albus waited a few moments until the potion had time to take effect on the man in front of him. He had given enough to last for the next half hour. " Alright. Mr. Dursley, where is Harry Potter?"
"I don't know. Probably dead or somewhere in London."
"Why would either of those be possible?"
"The last I saw him was about six years ago, I dumped him in London, and it was sort of hard to tell if he was alive after his last beating."
"Beating…" Albus said weakly. "Why would you leave him on his own in London at six years of age? He is your own nephew."
"Because he was a freak, and the son of freaks like you. Petunia and I were going to get rid of him right away, but we realized that some of your freaks might be watching us for a while. So instead of getting rid of him right away, we had a nice little slave to do everything around the house for us, and I got someone to do things to so I wouldn't be as frustrated when I got to work."
Albus' face was pale, and Hagrid looked sickened. "What do you mean by 'do things to'?" Albus asked harshly.
"Well at first I just hit or punched the freak when he didn't do things right. Once he was four, I started with my belt." At this he pointed to the large belt he was wearing, nearly as wide as a normal-sized person's forearm. He grinned at the memory of the beatings before continuing. "After that I started on frying pans and rounders bats, and it went from there. It was great stress relief."
At this, Hagrid stood up, his face red, tears running down his face. "You sick bastar'! 'ow could you do tha' to yer own nephew?!" A sickly purple light came out of his umbrella, and hit Vernon. Vernon dropped to the floor screaming and writhing in pain as the curse Hagrid had accidentally cast in his anger took effect.
Here the memory faded out and the second one, the one retrieved from Vernon Dursley, began.
There was a sharp crack as the buckle of the belt hit the raven-haired young boy once more. He looked up at his uncle, his emerald-green eyes dull and clouded with pain. As his uncle stepped back slightly, it became easier to see the state he was in. His left arm hung limply at his side, obviously broken, his face and arms covered in welts and bruises that were a deep purple colour, his left eye nearly swollen shut, both his nose and lower lip bleeding heavily, tears running down his face.
"You ungrateful little freak! We give you a place to stay, things to eat, and you can't even get the chores done, that we ask you to do!" Vernon's speech was slightly slurred as he said this, pointing to the fact that he had been out drinking. On the table next to the cowering boy was a large piece of paper with a list of chores covering every available writing area.
"I-I didn't have en-n-nough time Uncle Vernon. I'm r-really s-sorry, there's just t-too many chores." Harry said timidly, then flinching as he realized he had said the last part out loud.
"What the hell are you talking about, boy! I woke you up at five this morning to start on your chores! I'm sick of you talking back to me all of the time! You're a worthless little freak that no one cares about, so you have no right to complain about your chores!"
"You're wrong. My mum and dad love me, and they're going to come and take me away from here someday." Harry said, looking as defiant as he could. The one thing he always said something against was when his uncle spoke badly about his parents. He often dreamt about his parents coming and saving him from his uncle.
Vernon laughed. "You foolish little freak. If your parents loved you, you wouldn't be here! They're off somewhere getting drunk right now. Your dad's a drunken tramp, and your mother is a slag on the streets, which is all you'll ever be good for." He said with a frightening gleam in his eye. "Now, I told you never to talk back to me and then you went and did it again. This is going to stop here and now, you little bastard!"
He grabbed the tattered shirt that Harry wore and tore it off him, causing him to cry out in pain from the friction and the wrenching movement it cause his broken arm to make. This revealed even more severe bruising, several heavily bleeding strips that had been caused by Vernon's belt breaking the skin, and a thick layering of deep scars covering his entire back and shoulders that seemed to be old wounds similar to his current wounds. Vernon went to the garage door and pulled out a large wooden rounder bat…
The memory in the pensieve abruptly stopped at this point. Albus stood slowly from his chair. "I am sure you can guess what happened after this point in the memory. I decided to only show the less graphic portion. That was only one of many similar memories I retrieved from Vernon Dursley and viewed, the final one much worse than what you just saw. It seems he began shortly after Harry turned five, and did it at least once a month until he dumped him in London over a year later. I have no idea how he will react when confronted by a male member of the order after having gone through that, so that is why we will have Minerva and the other women go to him when we find him."
He looked at the people seated around the table and saw everyone with a look of horror or disgust. One of the younger Aurors had conjured a dustbin to be sick in. Several others including Remus looked like they were considering the same thing. Every woman, especially Minerva, Andromeda, and Hestia who had been the closest to the Potters, and most of the men were crying at what Harry had been put through at that house.
Several minutes later, a hard-faced Remus Lupin began to rise from his seat. "Excuse me, I have something to do." He literally growled this sentence out, his wolf side coming to the surface.
"Remus, I know that you are thinking of going to Privet drive, and probably killing the Dursleys, but please sit down. Aside from the punishment wrought by the castration curse that Hagrid used on Vernon, he has been taken into custody and will be charged with child abuse and battery and will go to prison. Amelia Bones will have the Muggle lawyers push for the maximum jail sentence. What is more important now is that we begin to search for Harry."
"You'd better hope we find him, Albus, because none of us are forgetting that it was you that put him in that hellhole over the protests of most of us. He'd have been better off living with Sirius, after he murdered Peter and those Muggles, than with the Dursleys. The worst he could have done was kill him, which I think would be better than what he went through with those monsters. I'm holding you responsible if he died after his uncle abandoned him." Having said this, Remus sat back down reluctantly.
The rest of the meeting was spent poring over a large map of London to separate areas for different teams to search, with the most searching near where Vernon said that he had left Harry. Surprisingly, Severus only made a single snide comment during the entire meeting about the entire thing being a waste of resources, although the flurry of spells that struck him after he said it probably were a large factor, especially the painful vocal cord freezing curse Remus used.
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Upper room of Hog's Head, Order headquarters - 3 September 1991
Remus Lupin sat at the main table of the room, going over reports for the second time. They had not found Harry yet, but in several reports there were interviews with local people that had seen a boy that looked similar to Harry at one time or another, but there had been no one that had seen anyone looking like him recently.
Andromeda Tonks, Hestia Jones, and Kingsley Shacklebolt entered the room and sat down at the table near Remus. Kingsley sighed as he saw the stacks of reports on the table. "I've talked to over a dozen people the past week, and no one has seen anyone matching Harry's description for over a year. With all of this press coverage, the Auror's office has started to get hundreds of people, all claiming to have seen Harry, but when we check them out, only a few actually match what we know."
On September first, the Daily Prophet and the Quibbler both ran stories on the disappearance of Harry. They had quickly found out about him being missing after charges were filed against Vernon Dursley, but they held out on a hope that Harry would appear at the last minute and go to school. When he did not, they chose to run their stories. The entire main section of the Prophet was filled with articles and interviews having to do with Harry. There were some radical editorialists demanding that Dumbledore resign from his Headmaster position, as he had been the one to place Harry with the Dursleys.
Dumbledore's trouble from the paper eventually died down, but some other problems wouldn't go away that easily. He had been put under a cursory investigation by the rest of the Wizengamot concerning the use of power of his position as Chief Warlock.
The far more damaging problem was that of the goblins. The goblins were quite upset that Dumbledore, the executor of the Potters will, had intentionally subverted the placement instructions and had placed Harry with the Dursleys who had subsequently abused him and left him for dead. They were incensed at the way one of their largest clients had had their wishes ignored. Pretty much every favor owed him by the goblins was dried up when they heard about it.
He had a rather hard time getting anything done within the Order account and finally set someone else to the task of depositing and withdrawing funds for the operation of the Order. His personal account was even worse. All of the goblin accountants that had been managing and investing his money had quit and all of the other goblins refused to work for him, leaving him to find some less efficient human accountants to manage the account. These problems had given Remus a sort of satisfaction at what Dumbledore was receiving, but knew that nothing that happened to him could even come close to what had happened to Harry at the hands of the Dursleys.
"Ted has been talking to all sorts of people in the area Harry was dropped off, but only a few remember ever seeing a boy looking like Harry." Andromeda said, looking dejected. "I wonder if something happened a year ago that caused Harry to move away from where he was staying. If he left London, I don't think we will ever find him. For all we know, he could be… dead"
"Well, it has only been a few months," said Lupin. "I refuse to give up looking for him until I find him, whether he is dead or alive."
"I know, Remus, I don't want to give up on him either. Hopefully we'll get a break soon, and find a recent sighting." Hestia said.
Remus nodded tiredly. "I really hope so."
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Hogwarts, Headmaster's Office - 8 June 1992
Dumbledore settled into his chair as he reflected on the events of the past year. A young Gryffindor named Hermione Granger had been attacked by a troll on Halloween. She was one of the brightest witches Dumbledore had seen, and he was relieved when she made it out of the encounter with only a concussion and a few broken bones. Minerva had arrived soon after the troll began to attack, and managed to knock it out before anyone was killed. They could not punish Hermione because she had not heard the announcement to return to the common rooms. She had been crying in a bathroom after hearing several callous remarks made about her by her classmate and fellow Gryffindor, Ronald Weasley.
Then, just a few days ago, he had been called away to the Ministry of Magic. When he returned, he found Professor Quirrell attempting to retrieve the Philosopher's Stone, kept at Hogwarts for safeguarding, from the Mirror of Erised. A short fight between the two ensued, revealing that Quirrell was being possessed by the spirit of Voldemort.
Voldemort had been drifting around as a spirit ever since his body was killed by Harry all those years ago. He had recently become strong enough to possess those with weak minds, and had taken over Quirrell while he was away from Hogwarts on a sabbatical. Dumbledore used an exorcism spell, weakening Voldemort's spirit, driving him from Quirrell and from the castle. Quirrell had been a host to Voldemort for too long, however, and his mind was damaged beyond repair when Voldemort was driven out, causing him to die.
To top off all of the problems at the school, they had had no luck at all in finding Harry in London. By May, Dumbledore reduced the search to only those who volunteered. Remus, Andromeda, Hestia, Kingsley Shacklebolt, Arthur Weasley, and Mad-Eye Moody all continued the search whenever they were not working. Remus, followed by Hestia, put in the most work, several hours every day, insisting that he would never give up the search for Harry.
The only good thing that had come out of Harry's disappearance, Albus mused, was that he had not been present at Hogwarts for Voldemort to attack. He shook himself from his thoughts when he realized that it was nearly time for him to get down to the Great Hall for the end-of-year feast. Once again, the hall would be decorated green and silver to signify the winning of the House Cup by Slytherin.
Even he was beginning to give up hope that they would ever find Harry. The city of London itself was large enough that they could search and never find him. Even worse were the large areas outside of London proper that he could be. There was also the fact that he could very well have left the area entirely, expanding the area to search across the countries of the United Kingdom and even onto the Continent or further.
If they never found Harry, he feared the worst for the world because of the Prophecy. If Harry never came to the Wizarding world and defeated Voldemort, no one else would be able to according to the Prophecy that had led to the attack on the Potters, and Voldemort would eventually have free reign once he found some way to return in bodily form. Dumbledore knew that after their encounter this year, Voldemort would be weakened again for several years, but he would be back soon enough.
He had begun his alternate plan this year. Near the beginning of the year he had begun to give private lessons to Neville Longbottom, the other boy that the prophecy could have been about. Although he had not been marked by Lord Voldemort, Dumbledore believed that he had close to the same amount of power as Harry. He would be their best chance of defeating Voldemort if Harry was not found.
It had taken this entire first year to get Neville to the point where he could be trained. He had come to the school as a rather bumbling and forgetful boy, caused by a magic binding gone awry. Dumbledore had used the binding shortly after he was sent to his Great-Aunt when his parents were tortured into insanity, but he made the mistake of assuming his power levels were the same as Harry. They were slightly lower, causing the spell to overpower certain parts of his brain. The year had been spent removing the damage caused by the over-powered binding.
Neville had become much more confident in himself and in his magical abilities and had even become friends with Ronald Weasley and Seamus Finnigan who had ridiculed him and his bumbling nature towards the beginning of the year, although now he seemed to be taking on some of their worst characteristics including making fun of other schoolmates similar to the way he had been ridiculed, which Albus believed was him trying to fit in with them. The only thing Albus was truly worried about was the group's ridiculing of Hermione who had begun to withdraw even more after the troll attack. She reminded him very much of a meek version of Lily Potter, and he didn't want her to try to hide her brilliance because of the "trio". If it continued much longer with her remaining friendless, he decided he would find some way to intervene to help her out.
He was rather perturbed that he was still having problems dealing with the goblins lose to a year after they found out about what had happened. He knew that with the human accountants he had obtained the services of, he was profiting far less than he would if the goblins were managing the account, and he hoped that in a few years he would gain some of his previous status back among the goblins.
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Outskirts of London - 8 June 1992
This was the second time that Remus had been through this section of London. Like the last time, he was methodically asking people about Harry. The Order had produced photographs that showed what Harry should look like now, using pictures of him as a baby and aging him forward with the reference of his mother and father and what he looked like in the memories of the Dursleys for developing the facial features. He had asked them to provide several photos, showing him with different lengths of hair, some of which would hide the telltale lightning-bolt shaped scar he had received from Lord Voldemort.
This was a more rundown part of the city, and he had been chased away from several homes by angry people who insisted he was some sort of police officer and wouldn't talk to him. He walked up the steps to the next home and knocked on the door. A woman with greying hair who looked to be in her late 50's or early 60's answered the door. "Hello, can I help you with something sir?" She asked Remus.
"Yes, ma'am, my name is Remus Lupin. I am searching for a young boy who was abandoned in London several years ago. I have several pictures of what he may look like now, and I'd like you to look them over and tell me if you've seen him around."
"Oh, so you're a policeman?"
"Actually, no. I'm more like a private investigator, and this boy was the son of my best friends. They died when he was one, and he lived with his aunt and uncle for several years before they abandoned him in London."
"Okay, come in, I was just having tea, if you'd like some there's more than enough." She said as she led him in to her kitchen. "How do you like yours?"
"I like just a dash of cream and two cubes of sugar." Remus answered as he sat down at the table.
As she set a cup of tea in front of him, he pulled out the pictures and spread them out on the table in front of him. The woman sat down across from Remus and sipped her tea as she looked closely at the pictures in front of her.
She lowered the tea cup and tapped her finger on the centre picture that showed Harry with longer hair, nearly to his shoulders, and his scar barely visible beyond the fringe of hair. "I've seen a boy that looks just like this before. I think he had several more scars on his face, but the thing I noticed was that strange lightning-bolt shaped scar. Now, where was it I saw him…"
She sat in thought for several minutes as Remus looked at her with hope that she would remember something that would lead him to Harry. "Oh, yes! Now I remember. I saw his picture in the newspaper a few months ago. There was some sort of drive-by shooting at an abandoned warehouse and an older lady and several kids got killed." She continued quickly at Remus' worried expression. "He wasn't one of the ones killed. The woman that got killed had been sort of the mother figure to the group of boys that lived there. His picture was in the paper because he was put into a group home after the shooting and he ran away the next day and they were looking for him."
"Okay, what paper was this in?" Remus asked her.
"It was in the Harrow Times, just two or three months ago."
"Well, thanks for the tea, ma'am, and thank you very much for taking the time to help me out. This is the first time in months that I've talked to anyone who has remembered seeing him recently." Remus said, rising from his chair.
""You're very welcome. Good luck, I hope you find him. It's such a shame that anyone could treat a child like that."
Remus talked to several other people, and, finding no one else that had seen anything of Harry, he Apparated to an alley near a library. He entered the library and immediately went to the area with microfiche copies of the back issues of newspapers. After several hours of scanning through each paper, he stopped when the article that had the picture appeared on the screen. When he saw it, he knew immediately that the woman had been right: this was Harry.
The article did not give much more information about what happened beyond what the woman had remembered. It did, however, give the address of the warehouse the shooting had occurred and the address of the group home that they had sent Harry to.
Knowing for a fact that Harry was still alive, or at least had been alive only two months ago, gave him a renewed sense of purpose. Once he brought this information to Dumbledore, he would have no choice but to once again get everyone involved in the search rather than just relying on volunteers as he had done the previous month.
He asked at the desk for a copy of the article, and once he had paid for it, he left the building and Apparated back to his flat to place a fire call in to Dumbledore to tell him about the new lead and request a full Order meeting.
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Hogwarts - 19 June 1993
When the year began, it had seemed to Dumbledore that it was going to turn out to be as eventful as the previous one. At King's Cross station, Ron Weasley had lost track of his pet rat. He chased after it and finally caught it in the streets outside of the station, but had come back too late to board the train. Unable to get to Hogwarts, he "borrowed" his father's magically modified Ford Anglia and used it to fly to Hogwarts along the train tracks. He had crashed it into the Whomping Willow when he landed, and the car had gone out of control and driven into the forest.
Thankfully, that was about the most exciting thing that occurred that year aside from the Defence Against the Dark Arts Professor, Gilderoy Lockhart, accidentally being hit by a Memory Charm that ricocheted off of a mirror when he attempted to use the spell on a student who had discovered evidence that he hadn't done the things he claimed to have done in his books and confronted him about it. It had been only a week ago so classes weren't affected, but now he was in St. Mungo's because he could not even remember who he was, and so Dumbledore had to find another Defence teacher for the next year of school. He thought Remus Lupin might accept the position if he offered it to him, he was having a hard time keeping a steady job being a werewolf.
Professor Macintyre, who taught Muggle Studies at Hogwarts, had accepted a job at Beaubaxtons to teach there, so Dumbledore had to find a replacement for him, but he already had several ideas for Muggles who he thought would be willing to teach it. He was hoping to talk David and Emma Granger into coming in to teach. He figured they would be his best choice because they would likely jump at the chance to stay close to their daughter. Besides that, they were the parents of the smartest witch he had seen enter the school since Minerva McGonagall. It would be a strong change in tradition, as the Muggle Studies class had always been taught by a pureblood wizard, or at least a Squib. A Muggle would be able to teach much more accurately, having lived in their world, and having much more knowledge than any wizard other than Muggleborns.
Hermione had begun a friendship with a first year Ravenclaw, and a Hufflepuff from her year during this school year, and she seemed to handle the ridicule of her classmates better, and had become slightly more outgoing. He believed that if her parents were there, she would do even better the rest of her school years.
The summer before the school year had been much busier than the year itself. Remus Lupin had asked for an emergency Order meeting early in the summer. He had been searching for Harry nearly every day except for the few before, during, and after each full moon. At the meeting he had presented what he had found: photographic evidence that Harry was alive and had been in London just months before, and was likely still there.
The next several months were spent much the same as the first months when they found Harry missing, with a full search of the area that the warehouse was in. Dumbledore had allowed the full search to continue until Halloween, and then he broke it back down into the volunteer group that it had been before the new discovery. They had been able to pick up a trace magical signature residue in the warehouse that matched Harry's magical signature, proving that he had been there. But too much time had passed for them to be able to follow a trail of his magical signature residue so that they could find him.
Aside from having trouble keeping a job, Remus had begun to become more frantic in his search for Harry. Dumbledore believed that accepting the DADA position would help Remus out greatly, although he suspected Remus would demand weekends off from lesson planning so he could continue his search for Harry.
Albus believed that if Harry was still alive, his instruments that were attuned to him would detect him within the next year. He was thankful that he had decided against using the magic binding ritual on Harry before he was given to the Dursley's, and had decided to wait until Harry began to enter magical puberty at his entrance into Hogwarts. The binding would naturally make it more difficult for Harry to perform easier spells that most witches and wizards took for granted, but it would become slightly easier for him to perform more advanced spells, although not at the same level of power as he would without the binding.
It would have, as an unfortunate side-effect, suppressed any inherited magical traits, of which he believed Harry might have received many. Because he was not bound, his bursts of accidental magic would become stronger as he aged without magical training, and as he now moved further toward total magical adulthood, the bursts would become detectable to his delicate instruments even with the strong magical background signals that filled London.
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Azkaban Island - 25 July 1993
Minister for Magic, Cornelius Fudge, was taking his yearly tour of the Prison of Azkaban. Each year he would go through a tour led by the guards. At the end of each tour he would do interviews and pose for pictures for the Wizarding papers and magazines. He had begun the tradition of visits to Azkaban to get more publicity and try to get his approval rating higher by showing that he was involved in many different aspects of the government.
Sirius Black, accused murderer, and resident of Azkaban for the last twelve years sat near the door of his cell, staring blankly through the bars as the Minister and his dozens of aides walked past while being led by two Azkaban Guards and surrounded by a dozen Auror bodyguards. Fudge was carrying the latest copy of the Daily Prophet in his hands. He stopped in front of Sirius' cell and looked in with distaste. "Well, Black, it's been another year, and you look as horrible as usual. Having fun in here yet? I have to admit, you have a pretty strong mind, to be able to stay sane this long, but you won't last forever in here." Fudge looked at him, expecting him to retort like he did every other year, but he continued to stare at Fudge.
What he didn't realize was that Sirius was staring not at him, but at the paper in his hands. The main headline was not unusual: Winners of 700 Galleons in the Daily Prophet's Monthly Drawing. What caught Sirius' attention was the photograph of the Wesley family who had gone to Egypt with the money they had won. In the hands of their youngest boy was a small rat that appeared to be missing a claw from the front paw. Immediately Sirius knew that this was Pettigrew. It even had some markings around the muzzle that only Pettigrew had. Fudge eventually gave up on waiting for a retort, figuring that the Dementors were finally beginning to break Sirius' strong mind, and he turned and continued down the corridor.
Sirius sat silently for several minutes as he visualized the picture again. The boy that had been holding Pettigrew had no looked to be very old. In fact, he looked like he was around thirteen or fourteen, the same age as Harry would be now. One of the things that kept Sirius sane in the prison was thinking of his godson. He would always try to imagine what he would look like now, and what sort of things he would be doing. The boy was a wizard and likely the same class as Harry, so he had to go to Hogwarts. A guard passed his cell as he muttered to himself. "Hogwarts. He's at Hogwarts."
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Azkaban Island - 30 July 1993 - After Midnight
The human guards of Azkaban had retired for the night, leaving only the Dementors to guard the prisoners in their sleepless vigil. Sirius had been planning his escape and debating whether to take the chance to escape and go after Wormtail since he had seen the picture several days before. Once he decided his best chance of ever being free was to go capture Pettigrew himself, he worked at prying one of the bars on the cell door aside so that he could slip through.
Now that the guards had stopped patrolling, it was time to escape. He concentrated and began to shrink and change until he became a shaggy black haired dog. Just as Pettigrew and James had been able to transform, Sirius had mastered the Animagus transformation into the dog that had earned him the nickname "Padfoot". He spent most nights in this form, and it was due to this ability that he had managed to stay sane with the Dementors hovering around. When he was in his Animagus form, the depressing effects of the Dementors were dampened greatly.
He slipped through the loose bar and padded silently down the hallway. He shifted quickly into human form to open the door at the end of the corridor and then changed back to his dog form. After ten minutes of walking and one close call with a guard that was patrolling the bottom floor after the usual shift, he finally reached the open outside of the prison. He dashed along the dock that had been built for ships that came in bearing prisoners, and leapt into the cold North Sea. He had been building up his endurance every night while in his dog form by running laps around the cell, but he knew he would need all of his energy to swim to the shore of Scotland. The only thing in his mind as he swam was that he had to make it for Harry.
AN: As I said, this is the most graphic part of the story. Child abuse is a sad reality for some children, very often even worse than this (around where I live a woman was sent to jail for killing her kid by pouring scalding water on him until he died from his burns. A good book about a real-life story about child abuse and recovery from it is A Child Called It by David Pelzer and I recommend it to everyone). Thank you to everyone who has reviewed the story so far. Please, everyone, keep reviewing. It is great to get feedback on the chapters, to see if there is anything I need to improve.