To my loyal readers and reviewers, chapter ten which will shed some (but not a lot!) light on what really happened to our hero! Who thinks I'll kill him off and who thinks he's out there somewhere, read on and find out! Oh and please review too!

Chapter 10

Sunlight streaming through the wide bedroom window woke Ginny the next morning, she stretched and placed a hand lovingly on her stomach, she wasn't far enough gone to be showing just yet but she was still excited by the prospect of having her and Harry's child and woke each morning reminding herself that it was actually going to happen. Checking the stone around her neck was her next job in the morning routine she had taken on since the arrival of the Ministry's official letter, it was still shining brightly and Ginny was once again convinced that her husband was still alive.

She dressed quickly as she remembered what Ron and Hermione had been doing the previous evening and realised that she must have fallen asleep down stairs by the fire, she didn't even know if they had returned safely from the Ministry never mind if the mission had been fruitful providing them with an ounce of useful information. Descending the stairs gracefully she reached the kitchen and heard the sound of two voices discussing something in hushed whispers, on entering the room she found Hermione and Charlie sitting at the table each nursing a cup of coffee, obviously prepared by Kreacher who was now running around the kitchen making breakfast for the two guests.

"How did it go?" Ginny asked as she entered the room. Her friend looked up at the young witch and smiled, "Very well, come and sit down." She gestured to an empty seat at the table and as soon as she sat down Kreacher began to busy himself bringing her usual breakfast items and insisting that she eat them for the baby.

"It took us a while to get into the office," Hermione said as Ginny focused her attention on the other girl, "There were loads of watch wizards on duty, I didn't realise they had so many now, but everytime we saw one we had wait until they had gone past before we could continue. With so many of them around we thought it best to use the stairs rather than alerting them to the noise of the elevators moving down to the auror office. The watch wizard outside Harry's department was seated at the reception desk and we couldn't open the door without catching his attention, we had to wait until he did his round which took an hour, he obviously doesn't like to get off his bottom and patrol!

"So after an hour of sitting outside in the hallway we finally managed to get into the offices and over to Harry's, you were right about the password, they hadn't changed it so getting into his room was easy! Once inside we could see immediately why they wouldn't let you in yesterday, loads of case files were still laying all over the place, on his desk, hanging out of the filing cabinets even on the windowsill we searched through them all, they all seemed to be of various people who we assume were members of this group Harry was sent to infiltrate, anyway we sorted through them and eventually we found this one, it was marked extremely confidential and had a magical charm placed on it to make sure no one could pick it up and read it, but it wasn't that difficult to get past. The folder was at the bottom of a pile which had to destroy written on them. It's a complete file on what they were doing out there, it also has case closed stamped across it."

Hermione opened the folder and began to splay out the numerous documents contained inside it, "We had to wait for ages in Harry's office for the watch wizard to go on another round before we could leave so we had a look through the folder, it's very illuminating." There were pictures of evil looking witches and wizards, some of them similar to the pictures taken at Azkaban, others official looking photos of very smart but still nasty looking people. There was a list of names which matched up to some of the pictures and at the bottom of the pile were five pieces of parchment two showed men that Ginny had met briefly with Harry, they were of Croft and Abery and were obviously faked wanted parchments created to support their stories. Two others showed men she had never heard of before, Ginny presumed they were the Romanian aurors involved in the mission and the fifth showed a menacing looking blonde glaring at the camera with hateful eyes from beneath a fierce looking scar, the name Dudley Dursley was splashed across the picture in bold, capital letters along with the words WANTED FOR TORTURING BY WAY OF THE CRUCIATUS CURSE. Ginny shuddered, this was obviously the cover story and identity that had been created for Harry and even though she knew it was untrue she still did not like the idea that he had had to talk, probably fondly, of committing such a terrible crime.

"Morning," said a sleepy voice behind them all and they turned to see Ron standing in his pyjamas with a bad case of bed head and a sleepy expression on his face, they chuckled at him before returning to the parchments that Hermione was still showing them. Ron approached the table and peered over Ginny's shoulder, "Didn't quite get to the end of these last night before, hey," he paused and put his finger on the parchment of Dudley Dursley, "Isn't that Harry's cousin?" Hermione pulled the parchment closer and inspected it carefully, "Of course, I didn't make the connection when I first saw it, Dursley, I'd forgotten that was their name. Yes it is him, well a slightly trimmer looking Dudley but I suppose Harry didn't want to carry all that weight around with him!"

"Wonder why he chose him?" Ron asked as he sat down and allowed Kreacher to bring him a cup of coffee and some toast, "Hermione, can we get a house elf?" She glared at him indignantly and he cowered, "Yeah, okay sorry, it's just Kreacher's brilliant!" he finished but let the matter drop, as head of SPEW Ron knew that Hermione would never have a house elf of her own.

"This document here," Hermione continued as she lifted up a piece of parchment and placed it on the table between Charlie and Ginny, "It says that Abery is still missing and lists the names of the four identified bodies including Harry's even though they have not been able to prove it," sure enough the four photographs were again displayed with killed in action splayed across them all, though Harry's bore the words missing presumed dead. "But look here at the bottom," she pointed with her finger to a couple of sentences along the bottom of the page which read, Simon Abery missing in action, no investigation to be launched into finding him he is presumed dead, although no evidence in terms of a body had been found all other members of the team were killed by the Romanian group and it is assumed that Abery was taken by the dark wizards and killed too. The case for the discovery of Simon Abery is closed and will not be re opened.

"But what if he's still out there somewhere?" Ginny asked, "How can they abandon him like that?"

"That's what I thought, it seems like they wanted the case over and closed quickly like they were trying to hide something so I kept reading and found this." She withdrew another piece of parchment, this one was smaller and neither Ginny nor Charlie had noticed it when Hermione had begun leafing through them, it showed a different picture of one of the aurors whom Ginny had met previously at the Ministry, it was a picture of Walter Croft.

"He was on the mission too wasn't he?" Ginny asked, "It says on this one that one of the bodies was his?" she indicated back at the parchment they had just looked over.

"That's what they told us but look at this," she pointed to two words written at the bottom of the page again in small writing these two read double agent. Ginny gasped and Hermione nodded her head, "I think the Ministry or at least the auror office were trying to hide the fact that a double agent managed to infiltrate our auror office, he must have been passing information to the enemy which is probably why they were caught out before the demonstration. They won't want to find Abery in case he lets slip that they made a mistake, all aurors must undergo rigorous legillimens testing and interrogations before they can join the team and somehow Croft must have slipped through the net, they won't be proud of this fact and you can bet the Minister doesn't now about it either. Unfortunately they will most likely be hoping that Harry was the fourth body found in the burned building and that Abery was taken by the dark wizards and killed and then all of their loose ends are covered, but look at this too," at this point Hermione began to leaf through the pile of pictures of various mean looking wizards.

She stopped on a picture of a burly looking man, "And look at this again," she indicated the parchment of Dudley Dursley again and the three siblings compared the pictures. "They have a similar stature don't they? The body they found could easily have been one of the dark wizards caught up in the fracas themselves, what if it was this man? Or indeed any of these thicker set men?" she leafed frantically through a few more pictures, "Plus I am sure, even with a new experimental branch of magic, that if a person died they would automatically revert to their natural form, it has to be one of the basic laws of transfiguration magic. Ginny I believed you before but now I am even more certain that Harry is alive somewhere."

"What about Abery?"

"Abery too, I mean why would they take one auror and leave the rest tied up in the shack to die in the fire? They would surely have left them all there, they don't usually show mercy do they? I mean what would be the point of taking him anyway to kill him somewhere else? They knew the Ministries were on to them why would they need an auror in tow? I think Drindle is just hoping that Abery doesn't turn up, either that or they are going to do something about it themselves."

"So what's the next plan?" Ron asked as they turned to look at each other.

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The man groaned and reached up to rub the pain in his head, he was laying on a comfortable bed and was wrapped in a warm blanket, he felt drowsy and as though he had been sleeping for a long time, a sharp stab in his left leg told him that he was injured, but he had no idea what had happened to him or where he was, in fact he had no idea who he was either. "Dudley?" said a soft female voice from somewhere in the room, a second later the long dark hair of a pale young woman fell over him, she wasn't pretty but had a strangely attractive quality about her. The clothes she wore hung limply on her body evidently they were many sizes too big for her. "Don't go trying to move, you hurt your leg pretty badly, I've healed it but I'm not sure it will ever recover properly, you broke the knee backwards somehow."

"Who are you?" the man croaked, his voice was hoarse and his throat was dry.

"I'm Annala, I found you and brought you here."

"Where is here?"

"A shack in the mountains, after the demonstration and the fires and murders, everyone ran but I saw you by the side of a burned out shack and I brought you back here when everyone had gone. You would have bled to death if I hadn't."

The man looked gratefully at the woman who had begun to mop his brow with a warm cloth, it felt comforting to be touched, "Did you call me Dudley?" the man asked her.

"Yes, that is the name on your papers from your robes, that is your name isn't it?"

"I-" he paused, "I don't think I know," it seemed familiar but he couldn't think whether or not it was his own name.

"You're English aren't you?" the young woman asked.

"Am I?"

"You sound English, are you alright?"

"I don't know, I can't remember…anything," he answered as panic began to fill his brain.

"I think you took a hit to the head, there were traces of magic around it when I brought you back," he reached up again to where his head was aching and rubbed it gently. "Yeah it feels like it," he replied.

"Things will start to come back to you when you've been awake for a while you've been out for the count for over two weeks." The man turned to look at her with a look of complete shock on his face.

"So you…you've taken care of me for that long?"

"Well I couldn't leave you laying there to die could I?" The man looked down on his body at this point and noticed that he was a large, burly man, he felt uncomfortable in his skin somehow as if it didn't really belong to him, but he supposed that was just because he was feeling confused about who he was.

"How did you get me back here?" he asked looking from his large frame to her small one, "I mean, I'm not a small man!" he joked.

"I flew you with my wand, you…you do know you're a wizard right?"

"What? Oh yes, yes I know that," a strange fuzzy image came into his mind of an extremely large man saying that to him in a dark shack, but the moment the image had entered his head it seemed to disappear again. "Yes I'm a wizard, there's my wand right?" he asked pointing at the holly stick on a small wooden table by the bedside. The young woman passed it to him, it felt a little strange in his hand, like it wasn't connected to him the way a wand should be, but he waved it saying softly, "Lumos," it was the only suitable spell he could think of and the tip of the wand immediately began to glow bright green, "Nox," he whispered extinguishing the light.

"Why didn't you take me to a hospital?" he croaked.

"Not safe out there yet, and besides I was a healer, I know what I'm doing." She smiled confidently at him and he relaxed a little. "So you don't know why you were here in Romania then?" The man tried his best to come up with a reason but he could remember nothing about his own life, where he lived, how old he was, if he had a family, nothing.

"I don't know, I…I just can't think at all," he looked helplessly at Annala. "Has no one tried to look for me?" he asked hopefully but she shook her head gently, "No, sorry." The man laid back down on the bed as the young woman left the room, she returned with a piece of parchment which she handed to the man. He looked down at the paper to see a picture of himself with details of his name, date of birth and nationality, but nothing else. He felt as if he was looking at a piece of information about someone else, someone that he definitely knew but he wasn't sure that it was him, however the picture was definitely the image of the face and body he was wearing so he assumed it must be him, after all if he had been through some kind of transfiguration, it would have worn off by now if he had been unconscious for over two weeks.

He relaxed on the bed and accepted a small sandwich brought to him by Annala, he continued to search his brain but still came up with nothing, he felt tired and eventually succumbed to more sleep hoping that he would remember more when he woke up again. He dreamt of fighting dragons and flying on broomsticks, speaking in whispered hisses and a flying motorbike, flying black creatures taking all the happiness out of him and a flash of green light following strangled female screams.

He awoke the next morning feeling tired out and was covered in sweat, Annala was sat by his bedside with a tray of porridge and a cup of water. "You were dreaming last night weren't you?" she asked him softly, "You were tossing and turning all night, I tried to wake you but you wouldn't open your eyes, you eventually tired yourself out around dawn this morning."

"I was dreaming about allsorts, I think I'm a parselmouth and I remember hearing screams, female screams followed by a flash of green light."

"See your memory is in there," she reached up to touch his head, it felt comforting having someone touch him but it also felt wrong, like she was the wrong person to be doing it to him, "It'll come out eventually, you just need to give it time, anyway you can't get far with that knee yet so you can wait it out here for now, let it all come back piece by piece." Dudley pulled himself up in bed so he could eat the meal she had brought him, he wolfed it down realising that he had a large appetite and was keen to fulfil it, he mused that building up his strength would help him to begin strengthening his knee and building up his life, wherever that was.

Later that day he tried to get out of the bed but his knee would not hold him up, the moment he tried to put any weight on it, it buckled and he fell back onto the bed. "I told you that you wouldn't be able to do that yet," Annala said as she entered the bedroom with a small lunch for him, "Your knee won't be strong enough for a few weeks, you need to let it heal." Dudley laid back down frustrated with himself, he felt that he was an active man even though his body seemed to say otherwise and he was longing to get up and move about but the pain in his knee told him he would have to be more patient. He turned to look at Annala who was leaving the room, "Yesterday you said you'd found me after a demonstration and something about burning and murders, what happened?"

She crossed back across the room and surprised Dudley by sitting next to him on the bed, a little too close for his liking, but he wanted to know what had happened so he let it slide. "It was late at night," she began, "I woke up to the sound of screams and shouts from outside my home, I jumped out of bed and ran to the window where I could see most of the town ablaze with fire, people were running between the houses desperately trying to put out the flames and save each other. I ran outside to see if I could help too and I was relieved that I had as my house went up in flames a moment later, walking down the middle of the street dressed in dark red robes and wearing hooded masks were a group of wizards, they were torturing a small party of people over their heads I think they were muggles, they were using the…the cruciatus curse.

"Laughing and enjoying the sounds of the screaming coming from above them they weaved a procession through the village occasionally throwing a flaming curse at the houses as they passed." Dudley looked horror struck at the thought but suddenly had another flash in his own head, an image of tents on fire and a family being tortured above a group of masked and hooded figures, then a flash of bushy hair screaming something, but he couldn't make out the actual word coming from her mouth. What was that image? Where had he been when it had happened? It felt like a long time ago, could it have been the same image that Annala was talking about or was it really an image from the past? And who was the girl with the bushy hair calling out to him?

"I hid, because I was scared," she continued interrupting his thoughts which ended immediately. "I couldn't do anything else to help there was too much going on and I didn't know which way to turn I wanted to run but where could I go? I have no family to turn to, I was all alone and scared. I waited for a while until the procession had passed out of the village, people were still running around trying to save their homes and screaming as they found loved ones dead on the streets and inside houses, I decided to come up here but at the end of the village I found a small shack, it had been completely torched but as I passed by I noticed your foot sticking out from behind a shed nearby, something drew me to take a look and I saw you slumped against the shed, your knee twisted at a funny angle. And the rest…well I already told you last night, I brought you here and I've been looking after you ever since."

"You haven't been back to the village at all?"

"No," she replied shaking her head, "There was nothing for me to go back to, so I stayed here to care for you. I don't think it's safe out there yet, this place is hidden away but I have still seen a few fires over the nights we have been here." She looked sheepishly at the door as she said it but leaned slightly into him at the same time as if trying to find protection in him. Dudley edged away from her, something about her nearness was telling him that it was wrong, but he couldn't really put his finger on it and he didn't want to offend the young girl who had cared for him. "You should get more rest," she said jumping off the bed and heading for the door, "You didn't rest well last night and the more you do then hopefully more of your memory will return."

She closed the door softly behind her as Dudley went back to searching through the few images he had just experienced trying to piece them together, but nothing made any sense to him and he eventually gave up allowing sleep to consume him once more. The next time he woke up it was dark and Annala was standing over him, he felt a little uncomfortable by her presence and assumed it was that which had woken him, "Drink this," she said to him offering him a purple potion in a tall, clear glass, "It will help to mend your leg," he looked at the glass in her hand, he had absolutely no idea about potions and healing and decided that he should take it, she had taken good care of him so far and he had no reason to doubt her advice.

The liquid burned as he swallowed it and it made him feel woosy almost immediately, he looked helplessly at Annala who smiled and said, "Don't worry, it's supposed to feel like that, but it's good for your joints and will help you have a more restful night's sleep, Goodnight…"

He was out for the count before she reached the door and finished her sentence so he didn't hear her mutter under her breath, "…Harry."

Dum, dum, dum!! Who is she and what is she doing with our Harry? Please review and let me know what you think of her!!!!