Missing Persons

A Prince Manor Tale

By Snapegirlkmf

Disclaimer: I own nothing of Harry Potter, I am only borrowing the characters to play with them. All rights belong to JK Rowling

Takes place: a few years after Return to Prince Manor

1

A Familiar Face

St. Mungos Hospital for Magical Maladies:

Harry Snape, Healer, rubbed his eyes and drank the now cold cup of coffee he had placed on his desk in the on-call room some two hours previous. This was his second night in a row on call, as the youngest Healer on staff, just finishing up his last year of residency, he was given the shifts nobody else wanted. Like the graveyard shift and the crack of dawn shift. It was almost midnight, and he had been on call for almost forty-eight hours, doing rounds and emergencies in the pediatric ward.

Pediatrics was often closely aligned with Spell Damage and Magical Accidents, given how many kids stole their parents' wands or touched forbidden magical objects and ended up cursing themselves or getting injured. Harry had just finished with a patient who had burned half her hair off trying to make her own potion, she was five, and lucky she didn't have worse burns to her head and face when the cauldron had melted and the potion within it exploded, lighting her hair on fire. Harry thought she reminded him a little of Neville Longbottom, who had been forever melting or exploding his cauldron during potions class, only his father, Professor Snape, had always managed to halt the damage before someone got seriously injured.

Harry had dosed the child with a very strong pain killing potion and applied copious amounts of an Extra Strength Burn Salve to her head and also given her some Hair Growth Serum to facilitate the re-growth of her blond hair. She would be fine in a few days, and hopefully remember this experience and learn a lesson from it. Harry also hoped her parents would learn from this as well, and make sure their daughter didn't have access to their lab without supervision again.

He ran a hand through his wavy black hair, inherited from his father, and straightened his green Healer robes, though his did not have the wand and bone symbol of a full Healer on them yet, but a wand only, indicating his resident status. Blinking his green eyes hard, he shook off the fatigue that seemed to drape him like a cloak and headed out into the emergency ward to see what new case had turned up.

"There's a new case for you over in Room 2," said Shanna, a mediwitch. "Just came in. The mother's being seen by Healer Daniels, there was some kind of accident I guess, and she broke out in these green pustules all over her hands and part of her face. Nasty! She had two kids with her, a girl and a boy, and the girl has a bruise on her face and a red mark, sort of like a burn on her arm too." She handed Harry the preliminary chart.

"How old is the child?" he asked.

"Uh, about six," Shanna replied, she was short and round with masses of blond hair and a cheery disposition. "It was strange, but the mother didn't seem to want her kid to get looked at, but Daniels insisted. And when I tried to get the kid's name, she wouldn't talk to me."

"Maybe she's shy," Harry said. "I'll see what I can do." He already felt slightly uneasy about the little Shanna had told him. His years of abuse at the hands of the Dursleys made him wary of a parent who didn't seek medical help for their child and the child's reaction seemed slightly odd.

He headed into the room where the two children had been placed, putting on a comforting look as he entered the exam room. "Hello! My name's Healer Snape, but you can just call me Harry if that's easier for you."

A small girl with curly dark hair and beautiful sky blue eyes sat on the exam table. She was wearing jeans and pink sweatshirt with a white and blue teacup on it and small trainers. The boy beside her looked a year or two younger than she was and had white blond hair and dark eyes. He was wearing ragged shorts and a T-shirt that had seen better days and brown shoes. Harry noticed right off that the little girl had a bruise on one cheek and she was cradling her right arm as if it hurt her.

He frowned. Seeing bruises on a child brought back painful memories of his own childhood at the Dursleys, before he'd been rescued from them when he was fourteen by his true father, Severus Snape. Few knew the truth, but he had been abused by Vernon Dursley, and he still had occasional flashbacks of that horrible time. "Hey, sweetie," he greeted the little girl on the table. "Can you tell me your name? And how you hurt yourself? I see you've hurt your face and your arm, huh?"

The child stared at him with frightened blue eyes, as if he had asked her something terrible. Slowly, she shook her head.

Harry felt his instincts go on red alert. Even a shy child would usually talk to him, children liked him. But he knew well how an abused child reacted, and how you were conditioned to never tell what really happened to you. So he said, casually, "Shy, are you?" Then he turned to her brother. "Can you tell me her name? What's your name?"

"I'm Josh Greenwood," the younger boy replied promptly. "And she's . . . well . . . Mama just calls her pretty girl for now."

Harry frowned. There was something odd going on here. The little boy didn't seem afraid at all. He also didn't seem concerned over his sister, and while Harry knew firsthand how siblings or cousins in the same house could be treated like polar opposites, the two didn't even resemble each other. "Is your sister adopted?" he asked Josh.

"Um . . . sort of. Mama just brought her home one day. But she won't stay long. They never do."

"They?" Harry repeated.

"The other kids. Most of 'em stay a week and then they go someplace else," Josh shrugged.

"I see," Harry said, his uneasiness deepening. He moved over to the little girl and said, "Relax, I just need to do a quick exam. It won't hurt." He waved his wand at her.

The diagnostic spell he'd cast told him that she was healthy, save for a bruised cheek and an arm that had been singed by a Burn Hex. He bit his lip. The girl wasn't old enough for her magic to rouse yet, and if she couldn't do accidental magic, she couldn't have accidentally cast that spell. It had been cast upon her, and that made Harry furious.

He summoned a container of purple Burn Salve to him and said softly, "Hey, I need to put this on your arm. It'll make it feel better."

She looked up at him warily. Then she asked, in a very small voice, "Will it hurt?"

"No. I promise. Will you let me? If you're good, I'll give you a sweet after, okay?"

"'Kay." She bravely held out her arm.

Harry gently smoothed the salve on, noting as he did so that the burn wasn't as bad as he'd feared. It made him angry all over again, thinking that someone, probably the mother, had harmed this tiny precious child. But he knew he had no proof and without it, he could hardly voice his suspicions. He gently wrapped her arm in a clean bandage, using a Sticking charm to hold it in place. "There! All better," he said, and reached into his pocket and pulled out two chocolate frogs from Honeydukes. He always kept some on him, to give to the children after he was done examining them, it made doing so a lot easier.

As he handed the child her sweet, he examined her face. It was then that he realized he had seen her face before. There was something hauntingly familiar about this girl. Harry was sure he didn't know her . . . and yet he did recognize her. Where had he seen that face before? And why wouldn't she tell him who she was? There was something decidedly odd about this whole thing. Something didn't add up.

"Okay. Wait here," he told the children, handing the little boy the second sweet. "I'll be right back." He wanted to check some of the charts on his desk in his small office. And the wall as well, where he'd posted pictures of missing children.

He departed the room, heading over to his cubicle a few doors down. As a Healer in training, he didn't rate a real office yet, but he needed a desk to work from when he entered patient information in charts and read test results. When he arrived, he leafed quickly through the five charts on his desk, none of them were hers, or resembled her in any way. Then he looked at the wall where current posters of missing children were displayed.

Normally there were never very many, wizarding children tended to be kept close by their parents. But in the last eight months to a year, several children had gone missing in the magical community, especially around London and its suburbs. There was talk of a kidnapping ring and whispers of a circle of dark wizards behind it all. Nothing had been proven yet, but rumors still haunted the hallways of the Ministry and the hospital, and all hospital personnel were given posters of the missing children, just in case they happened to stumble across one.

Harry examined the photos carefully.

No. No. Nothing. Then one caught his eye.

It was a recent head shot of a dark-haired little girl smiling into the camera with sparkling blue eyes. Underneath it were the words—Missing, Presumed Kidnapped! Alyssa Linnea Swanfire, age 6, last seen in London while touring Big Ben with her parents, Neal and Emma Swanfire, on May 25th, 2005. Mr. and Mrs. Swanfire are American wizards, members of America's Dark Hunter division of Magical Law Enforcement. If sighted or any information is known of her whereabouts, please Floo the Auror Department immediately at the Ministry of Magic.

Harry's mouth dropped open. This was the little girl in the exam room. He was positive of it.

But just to be sure, he ripped the poster down from the wall and hurried back with it.

Then he stood outside the door of the room, where the two children were now eating their sweets, and compared the photo to the little girl on the table.

Minus the bruise on her face, it was the same child.

His heart racing, Harry went to the fireplace and tossed in some Floo Powder. "Auror Department, Kingsley Shacklebolt's office," he called out as the flames turned green.

Then he stuck his head in the magical fire and yelled, "Hey, King! It's Harry Snape. I have something important to tell you."

A/N: This is a story I had written awhile ago but couldn't post because it was being used as a fundraiser for the Lymphoma/Leukemia Society to help raise money for children with cancer. Hope you all enjoy it!