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Harry was glad to stretch his muscles after that horrible ride. He was less pleased to have to strip down and be judged by a man in a long coat as he walked past. He was sorted into the left line. He followed the man in front of him into an imposing building. The door slid shut behind him and a rough voice ordered the men to stand still or be shot.

Scalding hot water poured onto them with no warning. Harry bit his lip to keep from shouting out, while others screamed in shock and pain. As quickly as the water cascaded upon them, it stopped. The same rough voice, now filled with ill mirth, told the men to say goodbye to any hair they had.

Harry stood in front of a man who wore a mask and gloves. The man held a pair of sheers coated in rust. "Don't move; it'll hurt more, little boy." Harry gulped as chunks of his hair rained down before his eyes. A few nicks and scrapes later, the man crouched. "Just starting to be a man, eh?" Harry gasped and squeezed his eyes shut as the sheers began snipping at the delicate hairs below his navel.

Bald, bleeding, and scared beyond anything he had ever felt before, Harry made his way to another building. Upon entering, he was grabbed by a hideous man holding some sort of needle. "Forget your name, kid. It's this number now." Tears pricked Harry's eyes as the needle drilled ink into the delicate flesh of his wrist.

Now he had to run. If he passed this test, he would live. Harry ran and imagined he was running from this horrible place, this hell called Dachau.

Finally Harry had a stained and torn uniform thrust into his weak arms. He pulled the top over his head, feeling the coarse fabric chafe across his sensitive skin. The pants, he found, were too short, even for his stature. A shadow fell across his path and he looked up meekly.

An older man glared down his crooked nose at the boy. His uniform was less ragged than Harry's, though no less stained. From what Harry could see, the man would have black hair were he not shaven. "Come with me," the man had a deep and aloof voice.

Following this man led Harry to a set of barracks. The man pointed to one and said, "That will be your living quarters from now until you are transferred. I would talk to the old man in the back; he will tell you everything I don't want to." With that, the man stalked off, leaving Harry alone in front of the dank buildings. Gulping, Harry convinced his feet to move forward.

The barrack was dim and smelled terrible. Harry kept walking to what he assumed was the back of the barrack, jumping slightly when he heard a cough or saw a pair of hollowed eyes staring at him. At the back wall there were two columns of beds. On the first one he saw, there was a lump under a thin blanket with a pale patch of skin peaking out. Unsure of what to do, Harry stood next to the bunk, waiting for the person to move.

The voice of an old man startled Harry. "You can sit next to me, if you want." Harry turned and sure enough, an old man with shockingly blue eyes was sitting and looking expectantly at him.

"Uh… Sure?" Harry cautiously sat down on the bunk next to the old man. "Are you who that man told me to talk to?"

The old man's blue eyes twinkled. "You mean Severus, and yes, I am. My name is Albus Dumbledore." Harry felt for some reason safer when the man talked to him.

"I'm Harry Potter," he said. "Why are you here? Where is here, anyway?"

Dumbledore smiled kindly at Harry. "Hello, Harry. I'm here in Dachau because I follow the faith of the Torah; I am a Jew."

Harry looked at Dumbledore more closely. Blue eyes were uncommon in Jews, if the posters were any where near correct, and the man's nose was long and crooked, broken before he assumed, but not shaped like a six. "If you don't mind me saying, you don't look Jewish at all."

Dumbledore chuckled. "I wasn't born into a Jewish family, Harry. I converted to this faith ten years ago." At Harry's confused face, he continued. "I had a very close friend… He disappeared very soon after the Führer came into power… but he was a Jew, and I respected him very much. He taught me to read Hebrew, he taught me the scriptures, and I felt the word of God course through me, and I told Gellert that I wanted to convert. He took me to his synagogue and I became a Jew."

Harry leaned back; he was impressed at the power of friendship and religion. "And as for your other question, Harry, we are in Dachau, one of the first labour camps that the Führer commissioned. If I am correct, we are just outside of Munich."

Harry's eyes widened. If they were near Munich, he had been transported more than one hundred miles from his home, from his parents'. It had been three months since their murders, and though the pain was still there, Harry no longer cried when he thought of them. Not much, at least.

Loud buzzing shocked Harry from his reverie. "Well, Harry," Dumbledore said, clapping his hands. "It's time for us to try to sleep, though how those men think we can sleep without anything less than straw is beyond me. You can bunk above me, the man before you left this morning."

Harry stood and looked at his new friend. "Goodnight."

"Goodnight, Harry. And don't itch too much, it draws the mites out." Dumbledore turned over and began snoring. Harry smiled; a small but real smile and climbed to the bunk allotted to him and shut his eyes, suddenly not so worried about the future.