AN: Here's an opening shot! Based on reviews, may continue and spin out the story. But if people do want more, fair warning: I will most likely have to add chapters very slowly, so please be patient! Thanks

The floor was cold against Harry's bare feet, and he summoned his slippers with a wordless spell. Better, he thought, as the heating charm embedded in the terry cloth automatically activated upon contact with his skin.

"Best gift ever," he muttered, mentally thanking his youngest son, Albie, for his last Father's Day offering. Though he was also partial to the mood tie George had just given him for Christmas. He thought it would save a great deal of time and trouble if his secretary knew to hold his calls whenever his necktie turned red. Indeed, spell phones were one of the more irritating Weasley Company inventions of the last 10 years, he reflected. No such thing as privacy anymore.

He stood up, and winced as his knees creaked and groaned. What was it about turning 40, he wondered? It seemed like one day, everything was fine, and the next, everything was sore and there was hair growing where he didn't want it and falling out where he did. The closer he got to 50, the worse it got.

"Ligamen lenitas," he muttered, easing the pain in his joints. The spell wouldn't last, but at least it would make him more comfortable for awhile.

Something had woken him up, and he wasn't sure what. He had an uneasy sense, the way one feels when there's a strange noise in a silent house full of sleeping people, or when one's left the oven on by accident. He summoned his bathrobe, deciding to go downstairs and look around, maybe get a glass of warm milk.

He rubbed his hand absently across the scar on his forehead, which he often did when he was worried. He could swear sometimes - like right now - he could feel a slight ache there. He remembered from his childhood something about old muggle sailors feeling a storm coming on in their wooden legs, and he wondered if it was like that. Phantom limbs, they were called. So he supposed that made his a phantom evil megalomaniac? He shuddered at the thought.

Never did figure out why muggle sailors have wooden legs, he thought idly.

Downstairs, he checked his work spell phone, but the only new messages were from the Auror Information Technology Team, notifying him of a network upgrade, and two outages. Naturally, he thought, rolling his eyes. The Ministry insisted on having these last generation models because they were supposedly more secure to intrusions from dark magic, but he figured Shacklebolt just didn't want to spend the money on new ones.

He looked at the family clock his mother-in-law had given them. Albie and Lily were at Hogwarts, though he saw that Lily was not asleep. Somehow, he suspected his 15 year old daughter was not studying at 2 am on a Thursday evening. He made a mental note to send her a howler tomorrow. Maybe he should threaten that if he had to warn her again about too much partying, he would add baby photos of her in the bathtub with her brothers to his next howler and deliver it to her at breakfast. James was asleep upstairs, having moved back in when he lost his job. Harry sighed. Ginny was still at the Burrow, helping her mother take care of her dad, who was recovering from a broken hip that seemed resistant to all attempts at healing it. St. Mungo's thought it might be a curse from an artifact Arthur had found in a muggle junk yard. He sighed again.

He squinted at the extended family in the minute-hand marks and finally just enlarged them temporarily so he could see them better. George was in Shanghai with his wife, visiting one of his factories. Ron and Hermione were at home, and Rose and Hugo were at Hogwarts. Fleur wasn't showing up on the clock anymore, now that she and Bill were divorced, though Bill was home. Someone was with him, apparently, but it wasn't someone the clock recognized. Interesting, Harry thought. I'll have to give him a hard time about that, though he was actually relieved if that meant Bill was finally dating again. Teddy and Victoire were in Paris, and he suspected they were visiting Fleur. The clock chimed gently, as though agreeing with him. Charlie's location didn't show, which probably meant he was on a covert mission, and Percy was asleep at home.

It was a big family.

"They're all safe," came a voice. "I already checked."

"Dammit, Albus," Harry jumped, turning to face the painting in the kitchen hallway. The elderly wizard looked comically out of place crowding into the blue abstract figures in the muggle canvas. "You know you're not allowed in the paintings in my house anymore."

Dumbledore waved his hands irritably at the unmoving figures. "Well, trust me," he said, "it is no picnic for me, either. These things are terribly unyielding. I don't know how you can stand these two dimensional pictures."

"So now you're bothering the rest of my family, too?"

"I told you," he said, crossing his arms and glaring at Harry, "I had to check that they were all safe. Especially when you wouldn't wake up. You're an awfully heavy sleeper, you know."

Harry rolled his eyes. "What seems to be bothering you, Headmaster?" Harry said, with exaggerated courtesy.

"We have a serious problem, Harry," Dumbledore said gravely. "Very, very serious, indeed."

Harry groaned inwardly. "Don't tell me," he said tiredly. "The dark mark has been spotted in Argentina again. Or you found another Voldemort love child?"

Dumbledore crossed his arms and glared at Harry. "There's no need to be so patronizing," he chided. "It's nothing like that." Harry waited patiently, or as patiently as he could where the paranoid portrait was concerned.

"It's the Elder Wand," Dumbledore finally said, eyes glinting with something dangerously close to satisfaction. "It's gone missing."

Just then, Harry's spell phone started ringing. An image of Neville Longbottom rose up off the screen, with a flashing red light that said "Headmaster Longbottom, urgent."

"Neville?"

"Hi Harry," came the worried voice of his friend. "Sorry to call so late."

"Professor Dumbledore already woke me up."

"Oh good. Then you know. Someone's taken it, Harry."

"Are you sure, or is that just what he's telling you?"

"Hey," the portrait yelled, "I can hear you, you know!"

Harry ignored the elderly wizard.

"No," Neville said regretfully. "I'm afraid it's true. I went to look myself. The tomb has been broken into and the wand taken. The wards were utterly obliterated, actually. That shouldn't have been possible. Here, I took a picture with the spell phone."

Harry stood there in stunned silence, looking at the chaotic scene and thinking about the implications. It was one thing to get cheeky with a portrait, but quite another to see the actual body of his mentor thrown on the ground, his coffin upended.

"OK," he finally said. "I'll be right there."

"Good," Neville said. "See you in a few."