Marge Dursley sighed as she washed the dishes in a kitchen that was only occupied by her. The house was much too quiet. Harry wasn't in the living-room watching t.v. or outside playing with the puppies. Dudley wasn't throwing some fit somewhere, and there were no angry neighbors dragging him back from wherever he ran off to instead of doing the chores assigned to him like he was supposed to. Both Harry and Dudley were gone now, and things were back to the way they were before they arrived only a few short weeks before. It was amazing how short a time it took for a person to get used to total chaos.
Colonel Fubster was staying in the guest room that had belonged to Dudley for nearly a month while Harry had kept the couch in the storage room "because he didn't want to be a bother". He had come when she had called him - crying for the first time in years - and told him how Petunia had ruined Vernon's son, starved her own nephew half to death, and blamed Vernon for everything when the police began an investigation after the doctor at the hospital had reported his findings. The only reason Vernon wasn't in prison at the moment was because it was going to take a few more weeks for him to recover enough to be able to leave the hospital, as it was, he was handcuffed to the bed, and there was a constable guarding him at all times.
Colonel Fubster had listened sympathetically as she told him the things Vernon had told her when she visited him when he called her after the police had interviewed him, and the things she had heard when the people who took Harry away had interviewed him in the living-room. Apparently, due to a quirk in genetics, Harry had been born with special Psychokinetic abilities that some rather lazy and primitive minded people who didn't want to dig any further had simply labeled "Magic", and he had been the sole survivor of an attack on his family home by the leader of a group of terrorists who also possessed these abilities. Petunia, who had been entrusted with Harry's care in good faith, had decided to make the child's life a living hell out of hatred and jealousy of her sister. Vernon hadn't entirely been aware of this, only knowing that Petunia had disliked the boy and had only rather reluctantly taken him in.
Vernon had punished the boy every time he had been accused of something, because he had been unaware of the boy's limits, having bought into the whole magic thing and believing the boy capable of anything and everything under the sun, and had believed that he was guilty of everything he was accused of. Vernon had not however been aware of the fact that the instant his back was turned, such as when he left for work or for something else that took most of the day, Petunia would add to the punishments he had given Harry by adding housework she didn't want to deal with and more to the chore list so when he came home and found that the shed wasn't painted or the lawn wasn't mowed, he added another punishment. It had been a rather vicious cycle which upset Vernon because he believed that the boy refused to mind him, and he took it out on the boy by yelling and adding more punishments which caused the boy to become stressed and start "doing magic" which further upset Vernon who punished the boy even more, hating himself for punishing the boy, and hating the boy for making him punish him.
Dudley - who Petunia had trained to get Harry in trouble any way he could from sabotaging his completed chores to provoking fights so he could get in trouble for breaking his glasses or "attacking his poor innocent cousin" - became Vernon's perfect little boy who could do no wrong. Vernon lavished the child with gifts at almost every opportunity. Believing that it had been Harry who had been breaking all of Dudley's nice things, Vernon bought him even more extravagant gifts to replace the items Dudley had rather carelessly broke. He never realized that in doing he was helping Petunia ruin the boy who had no idea of the value of a Pound or the value of Hard Work, and had never seen that Dudley had completely gotten out of control from being allowed to run wild without discipline as Petunia had explained away all of his misbehavior, usually in ways that put the blame on Harry.
When the police had come to Privet Drive to inspect the home, the neighbors who rather disliked Petunia and were rather gleeful that the local scandal involved her for once had told them of the number of times they had heard Vernon yelling at Harry whom they had heard was the disturbed son of a couple of mentally ill drunks who had offed themselves by driving into a tree at 100mph, and how they had seen a rather purple-faced Vernon Dursley drag the small boy into the house on more than one occasion. An inspection of the interior of the house revealed that despite the fact that there were four bedrooms - one of which was filled with broken and unwanted toys and books that covered every surface, including some rather battered furniture that had been placed in there as if it had been intended to be used at some point - Harry had been forced to sleep in a cupboard under the stairs. The boy's only clothes were cast-offs from his much larger cousin, which had been a suggestion of Petunia's Vernon followed as there was no point in wasting good money on clothes the boy was just going to ruin, and the only toys he had to play with were a set of broken tin soldiers which had been one of the few good gifts Vernon ever gave him for Christmas, never knowing why he had given his favorite childhood toys to the "Freak" rather than passing them down to Dudley, and not quite able to bring himself to take them back for some strange reason. All of this naturally set the focus of their investigation on one Vernon Dursley. Due to the fact that Petunia Dursley lied her ass off when the police had interviewed her, she had been seen as a rather unwilling accomplice.
When Marge had stopped speaking, Colonel Fubster shook his head, sighed sadly, and said that he knew that Vernon should have married the Wilkerson girl. He'd known that something was up when he'd seen that small boy in the too big clothes and wrong glasses. He had thought that either Vernon was having money troubles and was too proud to admit it, even to an old family friend, or that he and his wife were rather poorly disguising the boy so he wouldn't be constantly mobbed the second he set foot off of Privet drive. He hadn't realized that what was really going on could be this serious. He would have to get back in touch with all of the fellow squibs he had contact with, maybe one of them would be able to help in this situation. It wasn't just about the well being of William Dursley's children this time, that wife of Vernon's had hurt the Boy-Who-Lived. The boy who had saved his family by defeating Voldemort when he was but a baby.
Meanwhile, many miles away in the Headmaster's office at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, the usual paperwork that preceded the start of a new school year was piling up on a rather crowded desk and going completely ignored as one Albus Dumbledore frantically pored over several documents and genealogical charts, trying to find a solution to a very serious problem. Where could he place the Boy-Who-Lived without sparking the custody war to end all custody wars?
Downstairs in his own office near the Dungeons, one Argus Filch read the letter that arrived a half-hour ago for a second time. It seemed that Fubster needed help dealing with a tart who had ruined the life of the son of a friend of his as well as that of the Boy-Who-Lived who was currently staying in the otherwise empty Gryffindor dorms. He remembered Lily Evans. She didn't make as many messes as the other students, and didn't pick on him. If he didn't know that James Potter could make an incredible mess trying to make a swelling solution, he would've sworn that he had used Amortentia to snag her. Putting quill to parchment, he began to compose his reply. He was in, and he thought his sister Arabella Figg nee Filch might be in as well if Fubster cared to ask.
Edited 7/22/12