"Harry!" Six female voices squealed in unison as the door opened and they saw him sitting up in bed. Dora and Hermione reached him first, but it was a close race between the adults to see who could get to the boy they had all grown to love first. While Harry was getting hugged, amid tears of relief that he was okay and scolding looks at the memories of what he had done to get here; Dan and Ted rolled in a cart that was covered by a silver dome. When the dome was lifted, there was for the first time that Harry could remember a birthday cake that was meant for Harry.
Harry didn't know whether to laugh or to cry as he was overwhelmed with feelings for these people who had come to mean so much to him and he to them. They all started singing Happy Birthday to him, and the dam finally burst, as Harry could no longer hold back the tears.
"Harry, what's wrong," Asked Hermione when the song ended.
"I am sure that my parents sang to me on the birthday that I had with them," Harry said while still fighting to stop the tears that were still coming. "But this is the first time that anyone else has ever cared enough to wish me a Happy Birthday. Usually, I just get a beating from Vernon because it is a reminder to them that there is freakishness in the world." These words stirred the women into another round of hugs for the belated birthday boy, and a couple of manly pats on the back and one arm guy hugs from the two adult males.
Hermione was the one who had to break the suddenly somber mood. "We are so sorry that we didn't wish you happy birthday on your actual birthday, but we were planning on having a big celebration at the pizza place in town. In fact, your cake was already there in the fridge before we came to the beach. Then out of the blue, you decided to play hero and went out to save little Susan's life, and the whole thing was forgotten as we watched you head out to what we thought was certain death."
Dora continued, "What you did with that kite and surfboard was the most amazing thing I think any of us had ever seen. Even the hardcore windsurfers were impressed at what you did, and quite a few have asked Dan where they can get kites like that. When you got to her and scooped her up out of the water, everyone cheered, but it didn't take us long to figure out that you couldn't make it back to the beach and that once again had us fearing for your life. It was dad who noticed that you were traveling north while angling in toward land. He took the life guard's radio and was able to let the navy know what was happening. The navy had dispatched a Helo off of one of the ships, which Susan's dad insisted on being on since it was his ship that the Helo was leaving from, and it was going after his daughter."
"When the rescue party reached the area where the two of you were, they noticed that you were not going to make it to the beach. Unfortunately, the prop wash from a Helo, and the foil that was pulling you along just didn't agree with each other. The down force from the propellers pushed the foil down into the water, causing the board you were on to flip over and the two of you kids to go under." Emma was now telling the story. "Ignoring the fact that the Navy divers were ready to go out the other side, Admiral Kevin Wright dove out from the door of the Helo, plunging forty-five feet into the waves below in an attempt to save his little girl. After he hit the water, he frantically swam toward the board that you had somehow righted, and he noticed that Susan was waving at him with a smile on her face while shaking you and telling you to wake up. He got to you both at the same time as the two rescue divers, and little Susan was very upset that she couldn't introduce her new friend to her Daddy. After they rescued the two of you, they flew you to the nearest base which was an RAF base right on the other side of town. After getting you in the hospital, Susan and her dad came to get us and bring us back here. You have been out for two days and we were beginning to get worried about what was going on. Ted and Andi had to call in a friend of theirs to come monitor the situation because all of the machines that they had attached to you kept shorting out and they were becoming suspicious.
Now it was Andi's turn to continue the story. "I called my friend Amy, who was my roommate in school, and had gone on to be a healer. She was able to convince them that you had an excess of bio electricity, possibly caused by a recessive genetic trait or by something like a Portuguese Man-O-War shocking you in the water. She showed them that it was a rare but verifiable medical condition that pops up from time to time. The treatment used to help is a combination of using leads to ground your output to a grounding rod, and rubbing a lotion on your skin that takes away the toxicity of your sweat and allows you to discharge the energy that your body was building up. In reality, what you were discharging was an excessive amount of natural magic that was messing with their machines. Though Amy comes from a pureblood family, she has a brother that was disowned because he is a squib, and he lives in the mundane world. Amy loved her brother so much, that she refused to abandon him and so she has gotten a lot of grief from her family. The reason that she hasn't been disowned herself is that she is the only child they have that has magic. Her brother has taught her the concepts about modern electricity, and it was him that came up with the materials needed to take your excess magic and ground it into an object so that it does not affect the machinery around you."
Andi paused for a moment while a look of sadness passed across her face. She sighed and then continued. "It is truly a shame how bigoted and closed minded Magical society is. What Rob has come up with is revolutionary, and with proper study, would probably lead us to the ability to use technology in high magic areas, and even to eventually even combine technology and magic in a new and amazing way. However, that would force our society to acknowledge that what they derided as inferior, was actually light years ahead of where our society is. Rob works for the Queen's government in a special capacity, and he is the sole reason why Diagon Alley is still hidden from the mundane world. Every building around the magical shopping district has the collectors that he designed, pulling the excess magic from the air so that it doesn't affect the mundane area around it. It is funny that most magicals believe that their world is hidden from the 'muggles,' yet their primary shopping district is right in the middle of one of the most crowded and technologically advanced cities in the world. If not for Rob's collectors, there would be a huge spot in the middle of the city where nothing electronic would work. I think that would probably tip the muggles off to the fact that there was something going on there, don't you?"
Everyone in the room nodded in agreement, and they were about to continue their discussion when the door began to open again. In through the yet small opening shot a little red haired missile that launched up onto Harry's bed at near ballistic speed, her arms going around Harry's neck as she squealed into his ear. "Hi Harry. I missed you. I wanted you to meet my daddy, but you were sleeping so long that I was afraid that you wouldn't wake up before he had to leave to go back to protecting us on his ship. And I am so sorry Harry, but the ship out in the water was not my daddy's ship like my uncle said, but when my daddy heard that it was me out there in the water, he came to rescue us." Harry was amused and slightly astonished that Susan could say all that in one breath. Her brief pause for breath finished, Susan continued to fire out words with the rapidity of a machine gun. "I am really, really glad you are awake now as my mommy and daddy are here to see you. And later today would be too late as daddy has to get back to his ship because they are leaving to go to some rock named after a girl named Jill Bralter, and daddy says the sea and the Royal Navy wait for no man. Oh, and this is my daddy, he is an admirable in the Navy and has his own carrying group that he is taking to go and play games with the Americans. I have a sand box that I like to play in with my brothers, though daddy says that it is a giant kitty box for our neighborhood. I like playing games in our little pool in the back yard, but daddy says it is not big enough for the games that he is going to sea to play."
By now, Susan's parents had fully entered the room and had joined in with the growing laughter at the statements that their daughter was making. Susan's mom came over to the bed and gave Harry a hug, murmuring the words thank you over and over again. While the Navy taught its officers how to behave in most social situations, one of the areas they neglected was how to sincerely thank the individual who had risked his life to save your only daughter. Admiral Wright was gathering his words together, in preparation of enunciating his gratitude, when he finally caught a glimpse of his daughter's savior. His gasp of recognition drew everyone's attention, as his eyes remained focused on Harry's face.
"You, your Harry Potter!" He stated in shock. "I never thought I would see you again after what happened to your parents. We spent years looking for you, since we knew that your godparents were not taking care of you. We were able to gather enough evidence to prove that your godfather was innocent of the charges that were published in the paper, but when we had people approach the Ministry of Magic to get him a retrial, they all came back with assurances that you were safe and being protected from those who wished to harm you, and that Sirius Black was indeed guilty of the crimes he was accused of."
"How do you know who I am," asked Harry? "And how do you know about what happened to my family and what happened to us? Are you from the same world as they were?"
"I knew your mom back before you were born. I grew up in the same neighborhood, with Lily, Petunia, and some weird kid named Severus who adored Lily because she stood up to his dad. Lily had no fear, always leading us into the local woods for adventures and picnics, and then one day she seemed distant from her sister and me, and six months later, she and Severus left for a boarding school in Scotland, and Petunia was never the same. She felt that Lily had abandoned her and she became very bitter about what she was missing in her life. Not long after that, my father died in a gas explosion and my family moved to my grandparent's farm, so I lost track of Lily and Petunia."
Continuing on with his story, with everyone in the room paying rapt attention; except for Susan, who was busy playing with the buttons on Harry's bed. "It was almost eight years later that I ran into Lily and her new husband James Potter. I was working with a special branch of Her Majesty's government that was dedicated to hunting down and capturing or eradicating domestic terrorists. We were trying to track a group that was in and out like ghosts, leaving death and insanity in their wake. Apparently, our actions had brought us to their attention because we went on a raid which turned out to be a trap. We were trapped inside a small office building, while these people wearing masks and dark robes stood around outside laughing and launching what we thought were rocket propelled grenades and HE rounds with green tracers to see where their fire was going. There were only four of us still alive, when the battle turned because of the arrival of six people. The first thing that alerted us that help had arrived was when all of the dark robes turned pink and then began trying to tie up the people who were wearing them. In hindsight, it was really funny seeing the terrorists fighting their own clothes, but at the time, we were too stunned to really appreciate it. I was sent into further shock when I heard Lily's voice chastise someone named Prongs and Padfoot about goofing off. Then a guy who said his name was Moony slipped into the place we were and with a wave of a stick, the wall in front of us began to rebuild and to make itself thicker."
"I knew at that moment that I had lost my mind, so I felt that it couldn't hurt to ask him what was going on. He looked at me and told me I needed to wait until after the dark moron's troops were gone or put down, and then I could ask Prongs or Bear. He went back to waving his stick around like a conductor, and rocks launched themselves out at the terrorists. Some hit, while others missed, and I thought that he had terrible aim. The ones that missed, all seemed to blur once past them, and then Ravens, Badgers, Lions, and Vipers came out of the dark to attack the ones still standing. One of them got bit in the chest, and suddenly they all just disappeared. Lily and another woman came into our hold out and they both started waving their own sticks at us. Lily was looking over our commander, and after whispering quietly with her friend, she reached into a bag and pulled out a concoction which she made him drink. I watched stunned as the hole in his gut healed over in less than a minute and she turned to the next one that her friend Roo motioned to. All told, she and her friend Roo saved ten of our men that our medic had written off as unrecoverable. When she got to the four of us left mostly unhurt, she was shocked to see me there."
"While she was shocked to see me, I was amazed to see her and what she was doing with her stick, which someone in our group called a wand. After getting a hug in greeting, she introduced me to her husband James and his noble band of idiots, Sirius Black and Remus Lupin. She then introduced me to Frank and Alice Longbottom who rounded out their group. She told us we were lucky that they were nearby and so were able to save us from the dark scum who had attacked us. Frank asked why she was telling me anything since we wouldn't remember what had happened anyway. Major Evers, who was our commanding officer, stood up and asked for a quick word with the leaders of their group. Lily helped me to my feet and dragged me over to where he was urgently talking to Frank and James. Major Evers explained that we were a joint task force put together to battle the terrorists that were killing people in the muggle world. I stood there stunned as I listened to him tell them that the government of Her Majesty knew about the magical world, and because of the corruption of it and the lack of concern for her non-magical subjects, she had commissioned their group to find ways of bringing them to justice in anyway necessary. He was one of the ones put in charge, since he was a squib, and knew a little about their world. I was appalled to find out that we had had wizards and witches on our side helping us, but that the Ministry of Magic had a policy of arresting them if they were caught for breaking some statute and had thrown them into prison somewhere."
"All of Lily's friends were outraged at this, especially since, as Frank put it, their oaths as Lords and employees of the ministry were made to the Queen and to the realm. They were supposed to be protecting those who could not protect themselves, not help them to step into harm's way. Frank asked for names of the magicals who were helping, and then almost blew his top at the first name he was told. He turned to his wife and said I told you so; Wallace would never have helped the Dark Lord or his minions. They said that they gave him a trial, and that they sealed the records because they were still investigating the information that they had gotten from him during questioning. Everyone was shocked at this new information, and then Sirius suggested that we all vacate the area and continue the conversation elsewhere. We all agreed to that, and we took them back to our new headquarters. Once James put up what they told us were Potter family wards around the building, they all relaxed and we were able to discuss what was going on. After a few hours of discussion, Major Evers brought in the other ranking members of our group, and an accord was reached with Lily's group, largely because I told my superiors that Lily was honest and caring, and that James must be honorable since she wouldn't have married him otherwise. James stepped forward and introduced their group to my superiors and myself. He said his code name was Prongs, Lily was Silver, Sirius Black was Padfoot, Remus Lupin was Moony, Frank Longbottom was Bear, and his wife Alice was Roo."
"For the next year, we worked closely with them, developing tactics and weapons that could be used in their world. Our group grew in numbers as they brought us firstborn wizards and witches who were looking to help against Voldemort and his purge of magical Briton of those he felt un-worthy. They would spirit away people they knew were going to be attacked, and we would hide them in plain sight in our world. At one point, we had several hundred of them working for us and helping us to develop technological ways to combat magical attacks. Lily was a genius and she quickly became head of our research department. Her theories on harnessing magic to power technology were beyond anything that anyone had ever seen. She also had the ability to absorb knowledge at an unheard of rate, while being able to then translate it to working knowledge for anything she set her mind to. When she and Alice came in one day and told everyone that they were pregnant, we threw the biggest party we could, happy that even in what we now knew was a genocidal war, life went on. It was a happy time for all of us, and then one day, everything abruptly changed."
"Seven months into their pregnancies, Frank, Alice, James and Lily just stopped coming into work. We sent people to their homes to check on them since we feared the worst, but there was no one living where they were supposed to be. Sirius and Remus came back from a mission that they had been on in Africa, where they were looking for a device that was made to fight evil by the priests in ancient Egypt, and they immediately went to look for James and Lily. They didn't return to us either, and the brass began to worry. We evacuated all the sites that the Potters and Longbottoms knew about, shipping out our magicals to places outside the British Isles to keep them safe. It was a month before I ran into Sirius and he was hanging out with this short bald guy who reminded me of a weasel or a rat. I asked about Remus, James, and Lily and he told me that James and Lily had gone into hiding after baby Harry was born, but that they had been betrayed by someone and had to keep moving to stay alive. When I asked to be introduced to his companion, he told me that the man was Peter Pettigrew, one of their most trusted friends from their days in school."
"Now here is what let me know that something was wrong. In all the time we had worked together, they had only ever mentioned this Peter in passing, and all four of them had said that their animal sides just didn't trust him enough anymore to let him in on what we were doing. Yet here was Sirius telling me that he was a trusted friend, and the tone he used toward Remus said that he was the one not trusted. When I turned in my report, the higher ups decided that it was imperative that we find the Potters and Longbottoms as quickly as possible to help restore their obviously altered memories. During her research for us, Lily had stumbled upon a way to back-up a person's entire memory so that if they were obliviated, they could be brought back to a period before their memory was erased. It was policy that every member of our team was required to do a 'memory dump' once per day, or any time we were heading out on a mission. She also discovered how to wake up memory receptors that had been blocked or purged. Though it would not fully restore lost memories, it would give the person a sense of deja-vu when they were told about the subjects of those lost memories. This would allow us to re-educate people quickly when wizards stole their knowledge. Using the combination of charms and potions, we were able to help mundane leaders all the way up to Her Majesty the Queen recover memories that had been erased by the wizards who were supposed to have sworn their fealty to her."
"We found Frank and Alice, as well as their baby Neville, hiding out behind the wards at Longbottom Manor with no memory of who we were or what we accomplished together. Having thought ahead, Frank had given us a password to give to his mother which would convince him to trust us. We gave him and his wife the Memory Activator Potion, along with merging their last memory dumps, and brought them up to date with the current events as we knew them. It was unfortunate, but they did not know who had erased their memories. One thing that we were able to determine, was that whoever it was that cast the spell was exceptionally powerful, since even with the reactivating of their receptors, neither Alice nor Frank knew who had obliviated them. All they could tell us was that they had been captured before a meeting with their healer and it was Albus Dumbledore who rescued them from their captors. He took them to Hogwarts and had Poppy look after them, making sure that they were okay. After they were recovered from their ordeal, they went home until it was time for Neville to be born. Instead of going to St. Mungo's though, Albus had Poppy come to them for the birth so that they would be safe from the Dark Lord or his minions. Frank told me that Albus Dumbledore was a great man, who cared for everyone in the wizarding world. Frank helped us in trying to find the Potters, but for almost a year, no one heard from them."
"It was one of our junior officers who finally found them, and it was purely by accident that he did. He was visiting his mother and aunt who lived in a small town called Godric's Hallow, and decided to go to church with them before heading back to London. The church was having its annual baby dedication service, and there standing at the front of the church, were James and Lily with little Harry tucked against Lily's chest sleeping. Our man quickly left the church and found a phone, letting us know at headquarters that he had found them. He was instructed to follow them out of the church and approach them with their own code words, asking them to go to lunch at the local pub while I was flown up to a nearby base and given a car to get to them."
"That was the first time I met you Harry," Admiral Kevin Wright said while looking into Harry's eyes. "Your parents were at first skeptical and cautious about letting us near them, but they seemed to remember me and so allowed us to give them Lily's potions. Just like the Longbottoms, they didn't know who had erased their memories, but they remembered that they had been captured outside the Hospital, and it was Albus Dumbledore who rescued them. James said to me 'Great man that Dumbledore, he cares about the wellbeing of the entire wizarding world.' It was almost word for word what Frank had said when I asked about Dumbledore, as if it were a programed response. We urged them to move into a safe house that we had on the Isle of Mann, but they insisted on staying at their current home because Albus Dumbledore had protected it with the most powerful charms and wards available. I asked him if he had put the Potter family wards up as well, since Sirius had said that they were the best in the world, which is why we had asked him to put them on all of the Queen's residences as well as the House of Commons, the House of Lords, and the entire block surrounding #10 Downing Street. He assured me that they were unnecessary with what Dumbledore had done, and there was no need to worry as they were perfectly safe, protected by the love of their friends."
"That was late August 1981, and over the next two months I begged your parents to see reason and to move away from the house they were in. Talking to James was like talking to a wall, while it allows you to get your points out in the open; it is an exercise in futility. Nothing any of us said could sway him from his support of Albus Dumbledore, and if not for Lily running interference, he probably would have stopped meeting with any of us. Lily stood by her husband, but she began to have doubts about certain things which she told to me and to Remus. Remus had returned to us and had told us about how his pack had started to treat him as if he were a traitor to the light. He even heard a conversation between James and Albus Dumbledore about the fact that they had to be careful around him since he was after all a dark creature. This shattered his morale, as no matter what, his friends had stood by him. Lily refused to cut him from their life because she believed in him, and also that Harry adored his 'Unca Mooey.' She told me that if it were anyone that was a traitor, it was either the thief, Mundungus Fletcher, or it was Peter Pettigrew, who Harry instantly hated and who she had caught leering at her when he thought no one was looking. His look reminded her of the looks she had received from some of the pureblood students while she was at Hogwarts. It was October 29th when she called me in a panic, telling me that she needed to meet with me immediately, and she could be in London in ten minutes. I suggested a cafe that was on Oxford Street, and she agreed to meet me there."
"When I arrived, she was already there, sitting at a table in the very back corner with her eyes darting here and there like a hunted animal. When I sat down, she didn't even pause long enough to greet me, she just asked for her personal password to verify that I was who I appeared to be. Once I confirmed it with her, she relaxed a fraction of a bit, though she still was on high alert to anyone coming toward her or Harry. She slid a fat envelope across the table to me and told me not to open it unless I heard that she was dead. If that happened, then I was to do everything in my power to get Harry, and the Longbottoms out of England, as they had all been betrayed at the highest levels. She was about to continue when her eyes caught movement at the door, and her face went pale. She quickly waved her wand in an intricate pattern, and then told me to stay sitting for at least thirty minutes before leaving, so that they did not associate me with her. With that, she grabbed Harry and disappeared with a small pop. Five days later, l found out that the Potters had been killed, Sirius had been thrown into Azkaban for betraying them and then killing Peter Pettigrew and twelve Muggles on a street in Manchester, and Frank and Alice had been tortured into insanity by the deceased Dark Lord's top minions."
"I went back to my flat and pulled out the envelope that Lily had given me. It had a lot of info, and I will let you read it soon, but the gist was that on 25 October, Dumbledore had come by and convinced James and Sirius to switch secret keepers to Peter, while using Sirius as a decoy for the Death Eaters. They both had argued at first, and then quite suddenly began to agree with him. None of them knew that Lily was sitting in the sill of an upstairs window and so heard every word, though she could not see to verify that Albus used magic on them to get them to agree. She grabbed James's invisibility cloak and ran out the back door before going around the house to see what was going on. By the time she arrived, the deed was done, and Albus then suggested that James and Sirius go done to the Leaky Cauldron to have a few drinks and let slip that Sirius was the secret keeper. Lily couldn't think of anyone dumb enough to buy that, since the Fidelus Charm was designed to protect its secret, and so would not let the keeper spread it around to strangers that he or she had the secret to keep without first getting a vow promising no harm to the protected. James and Sirius left and Lily heard Albus tell Peter to wait until Halloween to tell his master, because that was when the magic would be most powerful. Peter nodded like a puppet on a string, and then left when Albus dismissed him."
"After he left, Lily followed the traitorous 'leader of the light' out into the village, where Severus Snape was waiting for him. She couldn't get close enough to hear everything, but what she heard horrified her even more if that was possible. Albus promised that Snape could have her if he convinced Voldemort to spare her. Her former friend asked him how he could promise that, and Albus assured him that he had his ways. It was at that moment that Lily kicked a board that was leaning against the house she was hiding next to. Both of them turned to investigate the noise, making Lily flee back to the dubious safety of their house. Arriving with little time to spare, she ran up to Harry's room and threw up some monitoring spells, and then lay down with Harry before she used her wand to stun herself off of a temporarily conjured mirror. When she woke, the invisibility cloak was gone from the shelf she had tossed it on, and her monitoring spells showed her that Dumbledore had checked on her and then told Severus to keep an eye on her until it was time."
"Her letter told me that she planned to try and get all three of you out of there, but if she couldn't then she would die to protect her son rather than survive while he perished. She also mentioned that James, who had been trained by a man named Alastor Moody, began to leave his wand laying around out of reach, or even in another room altogether. She attributed this to yet another spell placed by the 'Dark Manipulator' in his quest to betray the Potters and have her son killed."
Again, he looked into the eyes of the boy whose parents were two of his best friends when they died, and who risked his life to save his daughter from what was most likely a scared and lonely death. He saw so much of Harry's parents in him, and it filled his heart with joy that he finally had found Lily's son like he had promised seven years before. "Harry, I have spent the last seven years searching for you. I had my agents check everywhere, even the home of Petunia Evans-Dursley, who has become a hateful woman who screamed about not wanting anything to do with her freak sister or her freak progeny. We checked orphanages, temporary shelters, everything we could think of, but you were nowhere to be found, and I am so sorry for that."
"Who checked on me at my aunt's house?" Harry asked quietly.
"It was one of our magical agents, Avery Thomas." Admiral Wright answered. "He gave a detailed report on your aunt and uncle, and how they lived. Unfortunately, he died in an auto accident on the way back from following a lead. After that, we focused on other areas, trying to find you. For the last few years, we have been trying to find the castle that you lived and trained in with your magical Guardians between adventures."
"What?" Shouted multiple voices as Harry just stared into this stranger's eyes. Harry spoke with all the control he could muster. "Who told you that I was living in a castle and having adventures?"
"Some guy named Lockhart, he was sent to one of our inquiry boards by the Minister of Magic's office. He told us that he had been allowed total access to you and the memories that you had of your adventures. He also said that you were exceptionally skilled at magic, having bonded with the wand that once belonged to Albus Dumbledore when he was young. The books have you beating dragons, ogres, vampire sires, werewolves, and even taking a hoard of Veela as personal servants all by yourself. We figured that you were being trained and that even though you had help, for dramatic license, they said you did it on your own. I was skeptical at first, but after seeing your rescue of my daughter, I must say that I am impressed."
If Admiral Wright had looked around the room, he would have seen a plethora of expressions on the faces around Harry. Hermione went back and forth between knowing that Harry could have done all those things if he wanted, and insulted that there were books out there that did not even try to provide the truth to the reader. This realization, along with the fact that she now had friends, would go deep inside her conscious mind and begin to teach her that books could lie too, and that leaders often have clay feet. Pru and Abby were incensed that someone was out there making money off Harry's name, while he had lay night after night in that joyless cupboard. They would make the ones who did that pay every quid back to Harry, even if they had to have the Tonks's firm sue everyone in magical Briton. After hearing about Harry's former home life from the other adults, Dan and Emma were having a hard time imagining letting Hermione enter this world that seemed to be worse than the corruption in the third world governments that they had dealt with during trips to help people in those countries. Dora had seen those books in the hands of her classmates, but she had never really equated them with the boy that she had befriended this summer. She found herself disgusted by the treatment that the wizarding world had shown their savior, and vowed that she would stand by Harry no matter what. Ted and Andi, like so many long married couples, each knew what the other thought about the story that Admiral Wright had told them, and the icing on the cake was the fact that the foppish fraud Gilderoy Lockhart was sent to peddle his lies to the government of the Queen. Before they met this group they knew that the government was corrupt, and they believed that Albus was full of good intentions, but too much into forgiveness to see that what was necessary got done. Now they knew that while Voldemort was a dark lord feared by all, it was Albus that was the truly dangerous and evil one. They vowed to help Harry rise above all the obstacles set before him. Little Susan just reached over and hugged her friend Harry, not really understanding why everyone was so serious, while her mom wept for the parents of Harry, who would never be able to see what a great young man he was turning into.
The only face that had no expression was that of Harry James Potter as he tried desperately to contain the rage he felt building in him. With his ability to process information at an almost instantaneous speed, he was able to take the pieces of information that he was given, and merge them into a bigger picture. Albus Dumbledore, aka Whiskers, aka the manipulative old man was the enemy of Harry Potter, and possibly the boy Neville Longbottom. He had a direct hand in Harry's parents being murdered, and then when Harry didn't die, took control of his life and made it as miserable as possible, though he wasn't quite sure why that was. Also, the one they called Snape would need to be eliminated. It was obvious that he was the one who carried out the dirty work for the old man, and his betrayal of his one-time friend Lily was inexcusable. It was not Harry's fault what happened next. The new strength of his core, combined with the rage that he was experiencing at his parents murder caused a buildup of magic that if released, could obliterate everyone in the Hospital before imploding the building itself.
Dora was the first to notice that Harry was about to explode, his lovely green eyes had turned completely black, and his fists were clenched so hard that blood was dripping from his palms where his nails had pierced the skin. "Hermione, you need to come hug Harry. We need him to calm down; he is about to lose control of his magic. Hedwig, we need you now." An orange, red and gold phoenix appeared and trilled a song in apology for being there instead of Harry's Hedwig. "I know you. You're Fawkes, right? Never mind, I need you to take us somewhere that Harry can safely let out his magic before something bad happens." With a nod of his head, and a trill of pure beauty, Fawkes perched on Harry's shoulders and flamed them out of the room. It was at that moment that Susan's parents noticed that she was gone too.
"Oh no," shrieked Mrs. Wright! "Where have they gone with my daughter?"