While Vernon Dursley was drifting off into an uneasy sleep, the cat on number four's garden wall was still wide awake and seemed just as disinclined to move from its perch as it had been when told to shoo earlier in the day. Still as stone, it sat there immovable as a statue. Its luminous eyes fixed unblinkingly on the far corner of the street. It was so intent in its watching that it didn't even twitch when a car door slammed the next street over, nor did it seem to notice when a pair of owls went swooping by overhead. In truth, it was nearly midnight before the tabby moved at all.

Its eyes narrowed and its tail flicked in interest as a strange looking man appeared on the corner of Privet Drive right below the street sign.

The man was dressed in a set of plum colored robes with a bit of silver embroidery upon the left breast. Though the embroidery was barely visible beneath the long, voluminous purple cloak he was wearing over top them. He was a fairly tall man. In fact, he was nearly as tall Aster Evans, however some of this man's height was owed to the high-heeled boots on his feet. He was also quite a bit older than Petunia's father if the silver color of his long hair and beard were anything to go by. Nevertheless, his eyes seemed to project a sense of vitality and life as they seemed to twinkle behind the half-moon spectacles that were perched atop his long, crooked nose. As for who this man was, his name was Albus Dumbledore.

Dumbledore seemed to be completely unconcerned with the fact that he had just arrived in the sort of place where everything about him was about as welcome as snow in summer. He was too busy searching for something in one of the inner pockets of his cloak to pay any mind to such a little detail as being unwelcome. Something he wasn't willing to overlook, however, was the fact that he wasn't alone in the street. He paused in his rummaging long enough to glance over the lenses of his spectacles at the tabby cat that had been watching him this entire time. The sight of the cat seemed to amuse him for some reason, because he chuckled quietly to himself, then resumed rummaging through his cloak's many, many pockets until he finally found what he had been looking for.

At first glance, the device in his hand appeared to be an antique cigarette lighter, but it certainly didn't function as such. Dumbledore opened the device with a practiced flick of his wrist, held it into the air, and clicked it. Instead of a little flame appearing or even the production of a few sparks, something quite unexpected happened – the light of the nearest streetlamp winked out with the faint pop of a blown lightbulb.

Judging by the pleased twitch of Dumbledore's long mustache this was the desired effect of the little device. Still smiling, he clicked it once again and the second closest lamp sputtered into darkness with the same faint pop. Twelve times Dumbledore clicked the Deluminator and each time another light was guttered until every light on the street except for two, which were the glowing eyes of the cat on the Dursleys' garden wall, were put out.

If any of the residence of Privet Drive had still been awake at this late hour to even think about peering out of their windows for a glance at the street below they would have been met with a wall of darkness.

And so, satisfied that he would remain unobserved, Dumbledore slipped the Deluminator back into his pocket and set off down the street to number four. Once there he joined the tabby cat on the garden wall. He didn't look at it, but he did speak to it.

"Fancy meeting you here, Professor McGonagall."

He turned to smile at the cat, but it had vanished. In its place sat a rather austere looking woman whose black hair had been drawn back into a tightly coiled bun. She, too, was wearing a cloak, but she wasn't wearing robes beneath its emerald green folds. Instead she was wearing a long, black dress that looked as though it had gone out of fashion sometime around the turn of the century. However, despite her carefully styled hair and stern mien, she looked more like a bird whose feathers had been ruffled than the sleek feline she had been only a moment before.

"How did you know it was me?" she asked, absently adjusting her square rimmed spectacles. Spectacles, as it were, that were the exact same shape and color as the markings the cat had had around its eyes.

"Minerva, my dear, in all my years I have never seen a cat sit so stiffly."

Professor Minerva McGonagall was not the least bit impressed with answer.

"Well, you'd be a might bit stiff too if you'd been sitting on a brick wall all day," she informed him brusquely.

"All day," he queried. "When you could have been celebrating? Why I must have passed a dozen feasts and parties on my way here."

Professor McGonagall harrumphed, eyeing his plum colored robes meaningfully.

"Quite busy at the Ministry, are they?" she probed. "You would think they would be a bit more concerned about how everyone else is celebrating, but no – why interrupt their merrymaking for such a trifling matter as the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy…." She shot Dumbledore a hard look. "Even the Muggles have noticed that something is going on," she added fiercely, gesturing towards the Dursleys' darkened window. "I could hear them talking about it on their news. Entire parliaments of owls flying about … shooting stars…. They may not have our talents, but they're far from stupid, Albus. Which is more than I can say about some of our kind…. Shooting stars down in Kent – that has Dedalus Diggle written all over it."

"Now, now Minerva," Dumbledore chided her gently. "You mustn't be too cross with them. As you well know we have had precious little to celebrate these past eleven years."

"I'm perfectly aware of that, thank you," said Professor McGonagall impatiently. She'd only just begun to allow color to return to her wardrobe after four years of only widow's weeds. "But people are being down right careless. The lot of them, out congregating on Muggle streets in broad daylight and none of them even bothering to try and blend in, all of them swapping rumors…."

She threw a piercing, sideways glance at Dumbledore, as though hoping he might shed a bit of light upon the rumors she herself had heard, but he remained stubbornly reticent.

"You know," she went on, "it would be a fine mess if, on the very day He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named seems to have disappeared at last, the Muggles were to find out about the lot of us after two hundred and eighty-nine years of hiding…. You do suppose he really is gone, don't you, Dumbledore?"

"It does appear to be the case," said Dumbledore mildly. "We have much to be thankful for. Would you care for a sherbet lemon?"

Professor McGonagall blinked in confusion.

"A what?"

"A sherbet lemon," Dumbledore repeated, then explained. "They're a sort of Muggle sweet I'll admit I'm rather fond of."

"No, thank you," said Professor McGonagall sternly. It was clear that she didn't think that this was the time for sweets. "As I was saying, even if You-Know-Who is gone –"

"Honestly, Minerva, surely a person as sensible as yourself can call him by his name? All of this 'You-Know-Who' and 'He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named' nonsense – from the start I have been trying to persuade people to call him by his proper name: Voldemort." Professor McGonagall flinched as though half-expecting the utterance of the name to draw the Dark Lord down upon them, but Dumbledore went on as though he hadn't notice. "First, and foremost, because I have never seen any reason to be frightened of saying Lord Voldemort's name and secondly, because I believe it could lead to quite a bit of confusion when people go about constantly referring to any person as 'You-Know-Who'."

"Albus Dumbledore, you are the only person who would ever think that it could lead to confusion," she informed him, sounding half exasperated, half admiring. "Then again, you are the only one he was ever frightened of."

"You flatter me, my dear, but Voldemort had powers that I will never have."

Professor McGonagall shot him a look of disbelief.

"That's only because you're too noble to use them."

"You know it's lucky it's so dark," Dumbledore chuckled bashfully. "I haven't blushed so much since Madam Pomfrey complemented me on my new earmuffs."

Professor McGonagall cast her dark eyes heavenward. She was silently wondering how this conversation had gotten so far off course. Meanwhile, Dumbledore, seemingly oblivious, was busying himself with the selection of his next sherbet lemon.

"Albus, please, I need to know if the rumors are true," she said, deciding that she couldn't stand to dance around the subject any longer.

Dumbledore appeared suddenly weary.

"I'm afraid that the rumors are true, my dear Professor. Both the good … and the bad…."

Professor McGonagall pressed a shaking hand to her heart while her eyes flooded with tears.

"Oh, Albus…," she croaked. "I can't believe it … Oh, James and Lily … I didn't want to believe it…"

Dumbledore reached out with a wizened hand and patted her softly on the shoulder. "I know … I know…," he said mournfully.

"That – That's not all, Albus," Professor McGonagall added in a trembling voice. "They're saying that – that Voldemort tried to murder J-James and Lily's son Harry, too. But – but somehow, he couldn't. Something – and no one is sure what – stopped him. They're saying that when he couldn't kill Harry Potter, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named's power broke – and that's why he gone."

Dumbledore merely nodded solemnly.

"You – you mean it's all true," she gasped. "After everything that monster's done … all the people he's murdered and had murdered … he was stopped by a little boy? It's – it's incredible … but how in the world did Harry survive?"

"That I'm afraid we may never truly know," Dumbledore said softly. "Those who could have told us are far beyond our reach…."

Professor McGonagall nodded slowly, as though not quite sure what to make of Dumbledore's remark; but, since the tears streaming down her face were getting the better of her, she decided to put it out of her mind for the moment. Instead she tugged a lace handkerchief from her sleeve and began drying her eyes beneath her square spectacles.

Dumbledore gave a single, great sniff, then took an odd golden pocket-watch from another of his many pockets and began to examine it. It truly was an odd timepiece, if that's what it was at all. It had twelve dials, but no numbers; instead, there were little gemstone planets moving about the edge. The device must have made some sort of sense to Dumbledore, however, because when he returned it to his pocket he remarked, "Hagrid's late." He shot a sideways glance at Professor McGonagall, who was still drying her eyes. The look was just as piercing as any of those she had fixed upon him. "I suppose that it was him who told you where to find me," he asked.

"Yes," she admitted, her voice was still creaky from crying. "He mentioned that you had some business here after you finished up at the Ministry." She sniffed softly, but as she went on her voice regained some of its usual brusqueness. "I don't suppose that you'd mind telling me why you decided to come here, of all places?"

"That, my dear, is quite simple," Dumbledore informed her. "I have come to bring Harry to his aunt and uncle."

"You've what," Professor McGonagall exclaimed aghast. "You don't mean – you cannot mean the people who live here?" she cried, jumping to her feet and waving her handkerchief in number four's general direction. "Albus – you can't. I've watched these people all day. They are the worse sort of – of Muggle imaginable. You couldn't find a pair of people who are less like us. And they've got this son – I saw him carrying on all the way up the street, screaming at his mother for sweets. You really want Harry Potter to come and live here! They're –"

"– his family," Dumbledore interrupted her firmly.

Professor McGonagall looked far from convinced.

"But what of our world, Albus?" she asked "If he grows up here who will tell him about his heritage…?"

"His aunt and uncle will, of course," Dumbledore told her as though it were as simple as that. "I've written them a letter explaining what's happened."

"A letter?" Professor McGonagall muttered disbelievingly, sitting back down on the wall and shooting a look in Dumbledore's direction that said quite plainly that she thought he'd taken leave of his senses. "Really, Albus, you think you can explain something of this – this – magnitude to a pair of Muggles in a letter? After tonight Harry Potter will be famous – a legend – there will be books written about him – why in a year's time I doubt that there'll be a single person in our world who doesn't know his name. He's already being heralded as the Boy-Who-Lived!"

"Exactly," said Dumbledore his expression becoming quite serious. "Famous before he can do little more than toddle! Famous for something he won't even remember! It's enough to turn any boy's head. He'll be far better off growing up away from all of that … until he is ready…."

Professor McGonagall looked as though she wished to object, but in the end, she let it go.

"I suppose you are right, Dumbledore," she murmured. "How will he be getting here? I doubt that you're hiding him in one of your pockets."

Dumbledore smiled genially.

"Hagrid's bringing him."

Professor McGonagall's expression became quite stern.

"Do you think it's wise to trust Hagrid with something as important as this?"

"Minerva," Dumbledore said sternly. "I would trust Hagrid with my life."

"I'm not saying his heart isn't in the right place," Professor McGonagall clarified, "but you cannot deny that he can be a bit careless. He tends to – what in the blazes is that?"

The stillness of the night had been broken by a low rumbling sound. A rumbling that began to grow steadily louder as Professor McGonagall and Dumbledore began to look up and down the dark street for some sign of the headlight it had to be attached to. The sound had just begun to swell to a thunderous roar when they both looked up and something quite unexpected happened – an enormous red-and-gold motorbike came hurtling out of the sky and landed on the blacktop in front of them.

The motorbike, while a rather large machine in its own right, looked like little more than a child's tricycle when compared to the man astride it. A veritable giant, he was easily twice as tall as a regular man and at least three times as wide. He seemed too big to really exist, and so wild with his long, wiry black hair and beard. Neither of which looked as though they'd ever heard of a brush or comb much less encountered one.

"Ah, Hagrid, at last," said Dumbledore, sounding quite relieve as he identified the motorbike's rider. "And where did you get that contraption?" he asked, warily.

"Young Sirius Black lent it to me, Professor Dumbledore, sir," said Hagrid as he climbed carefully off the motorbike. He was moving as slowly as he could so that he didn't jostle the bundle of blankets he was holding in his vast, muscular arms. "I've got him here, sir."

"No problems, I trust, Hagrid?" Dumbledore asked pointedly.

"No, sir," Hagrid confirmed. "Th' house was almost destroyed, but I got him out all right before the Muggles started swarmin' around. Little tyke seems ter like flyin'. He was out as soon as we got in to the air."

The professors leaned forward over the bundle of blankets. Swaddled within, just visible beneath the folds of fabric, was a little boy. As Hagrid had said, he was sound asleep, his dark lashes like sooty smudges against his pallid cheeks.

Professor McGonagall's eyes narrowed as she spied something out of place on the boy's forehead, partially hidden beneath a flyaway lock of jet-black hair.

"What's this," she murmured, brushing the boy's fringe aside and freezing at the sight of what she'd uncovered: Dead center on young Harry's forehead was a cut shaped like a bolt of lightning. The lines of which were so cleanly etched they could have been made with a scalpel.

"Is that where –?" she asked in a horrified whisper.

"Yes," said Dumbledore gravely. "He'll have that scar forever."

"Couldn't you do something about it, Albus?" she persisted, feeling that there was something quite wrong with the mark.

"It's not within my power to do anything about it I'm afraid and even if I could, I'm not sure I should," Dumbledore said cryptically. "Sometimes scars can come in quite handy…. I myself have one above my left knee that is a perfect map of the London Underground…. Though," he added wryly. "It's a bit difficult to use it as such without causing a scandal, though, I must say –"

He trailed off. The look Professor McGonagall was now directing at him was positively frigid and said quite plainly that she found this particular topic to be more than a little inappropriate.

Dumbledore gave a faint cough.

"Yes, well," he said, turning his attention to Hagrid. "Best give him here, Hagrid – we shouldn't linger here any longer than we have already."

"Of – of course, sir," said Hagrid, placing Harry's bundled form into Dumbledore's arms. "Best try not to wake him, sir."

Dumbledore said nothing. He gazed for a moment into Harry's sleeping face, then turned towards the Dursleys' house.

"Could I – could I say good-bye to him, sir?" Hagrid asked; then, before Dumbledore could reply, he bent his great, shaggy head over Harry and gave him a very scratchy and whiskery kiss to the top of the head. The giant had no more backed a single step away when he let out a howl of sorrow.

"Shhh!" scolded Professor McGonagall, "you'll wake the Muggles!"

"S-s-sorry," Hagrid sobbed, "But I c-c-can't help it – Lily an' James are dead – an' poor little Harry's off ter live with Muggles –"

"Oh, Hagrid, we're all upset, but you must get a hold of yourself or we'll be found," Professor McGonagall urged the large man, handing him her lace handkerchief – which looked positively miniscule in his massive hand and was barely large enough to blot away the tears of a single eye at a time. While she was patting the giant consolingly on the arm, Dumbledore had stepped over the low garden wall and walked up to the door of number four.

Without a moment's hesitation, Dumbledore placed Harry down on the doorstep, then he took a letter in a heavy parchment envelope out of his cloak and tucked it inside of Harry's blankets. With this done he came back over to the other two. For a full minute, the three of them stood and looked at the little bundle; Hagrid's massive shoulders shook, Professor McGonagall blinked furiously, and the twinkling light that usually shone from Dumbledore's eyes seemed to have gone out.

"Well," said Dumbledore finally, "that's that. We've no business staying here. We may as well go and join the celebrations."

"S'ppose so," said Hagrid in a very muffled voice as he returned the now spotted lace to Professor McGonagall. "I best get this bike away. G'night, Professor McGonagall – Professor Dumbledore, sir."

Wiping his streaming eyes on his jacket sleeve, Hagrid swung himself onto the motorbike and kicked the engine into life; with a roar it rose into the air and soared off into the night.

"I shall see you back at the school soon, I expect, Professor McGonagall," said Dumbledore, nodding to her. Professor McGonagall merely blew her nose in lieu of answering.

A rolling rumble of thunder echoed throughout Privet Drive as Dumbledore turned and walked back down the street. Once on the corner, he took out the Deluminator, turned a small dial on the side, and clicked it once. Twelve balls of light sped back to their streetlamps. By the glow of the returning lights, Dumbledore could make out the sight of a tabby cat creeping off around the corner at the other end of the street and he could see the bundle of blankets on the doorstep of number four.

"Good luck, Harry Potter," he murmured, turning on his heel, and then with a swish of his cloak he was gone.

An autumn chilled wind ruffled the neat hedges of Privet Drive as the rumble of more thunder stole across the otherwise quiet street. Inside his blankets, Harry Potter rolled over without waking up; one small hand closing upon the letter beside him as he slept on. All too soon, however, the first drops of rain would begin to fall and the sole surviving member of the Potter family would wake to find himself in a very strange place.