DISCLAIMER: Is the one character who takes the threats and dangers of the magical world seriously treated as a joke by everyone else in the potterverse? If so, I don't own Harry Potter.

CHAPTER 15

"It is not given to many to revisit their youth." Dumbledore's actually smiling at me, the arse. Like he'll be doing me a favour.

I laugh out loud at that. "If it weren't for the dire need, I wouldn't be. I'm going to be subjecting myself to several years of teenage dramatics and going through puberty a second time, as if once wasn't bloody awful enough. You may have to turn a blind eye to me sneaking out every so often with a bottle of aging potion just for respite's sake."

-oOo-

It takes another scolding from Madame Flamel to get Dumbledore out of the house, still in the boiler suit. She'd got Harry to sleep despite all the excitement and she was not for letting Dumbledore go up and disturb him. It may be centuries since she was last a mother, but it's like riding a bike. Dumbledore apparates from the driveway, giving the muggleworthiness spells what I hope is their last workout of the day. There are plenty of people out and about even this close to sunset, so a skinny old wizard in a too-small boilersuit, disapparating in plain sight, is a bit of a challenge to the magic. It doesn't surprise me to learn that he burnt a few of the rune-parchments out altogether. Annoying: those things aren't cheap.

"That was less trouble than I was expecting," Nicolas observes as I close the front door and breathe a huge sigh of relief. From the kitchen I can hear the kettle coming to a boil, so we join Perenelle there for tea.

"Home field advantage," I remark.

"Oh?" They both bid me go on in near-perfect unison. What six centuries of marriage will do for you, that.

"Harry's mother invoked an absolute monster of a really old protective spell on this house before she died, and it's almost certainly got the standard 'confusion and misfortune to the enemy' bit in it. At a guess, Dumbledore didn't realise he wasn't exempt from that, even though he monkeyed with it when he dropped Harry off here. His decision-making will have been compromised as soon as he settled an intention to attack here, as well as his luck turning sour."

The Flamels share a look. Quite a long one, giving me quite the excluded feeling as they have a silent conversation.

It's Madame Flamel who speaks first. "Defensor Patriae, were I to venture a guess," she says, "how much analysis have you done?"

"I'll get the file," I tell her, stepping into the dining room to pick it up, I'd left it out because I had actually meant to ask about this, "I ran a prism survey and got some images."

The Flamels look over my photographs of the dining room wall with the rainbow projected on it. "Yes," Perenelle says at length, "Defensor Patriae. The signature is quite distinctive."

"Defender of the Homeland?" I translate, "All I could figure out is that it's a really big piece of magic that got worked on for something like eight or nine hundred years. Some sort of blood magic, possible human sacrifice involved, very strong defense and protection elements."

She nods along with the thumbnail summary of my analysis, "Well, Sam Hartlib's the nearest thing to an expert nowadays. He was one of the last to have a hand in it. He ensorcelled Charles Stuart's execution scaffold to add his blood and life to the magic. Sam was on the Parliamentary side of the civil war, you see, and when they sentenced the king to death he took a view of 'waste not, want not' about the whole thing even though he didn't approve of the proceeding."

I'm a bit taken aback. "Do I understand correctly? The magical defence of the realm is powered by the sacrifice of royal blood?"

She gives me the kind of bright and brittle smile that puts a polite face on a distasteful topic. "I understand so, yes. I seem to recall there were some peers of the realm and knights put to death as well, but royalty is the most powerful charge. Charles Stuart's death allowed Sam to seal it for all time, if memory serves. Alfred the Great is reputed to have commissioned the first working on the site of what is now the Tower, and may have given his life to protect his realm. The histories are, sorry to say, obscure as all records of Alfred were heavily edited when Secrecy came in, what with him being England's first sorceror-king. Most of what became the College were in Egypt or Byzantium at the time, so we don't know either. Using the deaths of traitors came later, as I understand it."

I'm more than mildly surprised at how much sense it makes. "Resulting in every attempt at invasion since being a complete shambles of poor planning and incompetent execution?" The Armada, Napoleon, Operation Sealion: none of them got even close to the shores of Blighty, and all were marked by spectacular cockups. "Do we know what else can be done with that magic? Should I be asking Dr. Hartlib?"

"Probably," Pernelle says, "but what I'm wondering is how Lily Potter managed to call on it. It's supposed to be something only the oath-sworn and officers of the king should be able to do."

I take a moment. It's not so much a magical question as a legal question, and I'm the only one of us present that has ever passed exams in that. "Would the magic adapt to the current political reality?" I ask.

Perenelle takes a moment to think. "It's rather likely, yes. It's a magic of the realm, so what the realm currently is should govern and guide it."

"Hmm. So under current conditions 'officers' means officers appointed under authority of the crown in parliament. Which would mean constables, justices of the peace, officers of the armed forces, possibly other ranks in same, most of the civil service above some grade we'd have to experiment to find, officers of the court, and probably a whole lot of other categories I can't think of off the cuff. She wasn't likely to be any of those, unless she got a special constable's warrant we don't know about. Leaves 'oath-sworn'. How formal do you have to be, do you think?" There's something I've seen in Petunia's memories that represents an amusing possibility.

Nicolas takes this one, "We're talking about oaths in the sight of magic. Sincerity would be the most important thing."

"So a promise to serve the queen made by a seven-year-old little girl, in all childlike innocence, would do the job?"

"Yes, quite well I should think, at least until adult cynicism erodes it, but who administers oaths to children that young?"

"The Brownie Guides. If it's the same as the Cub Scout Promise I made, it starts with a promise to do one's duty to God and the Queen." Amusing. Dumbledore would never have figured this out in a million years.

Nicolas chuckles. "I will be circulating photographs of Sam Hartlib's face when he hears about this."

Perenelle is more measured. "What the world lost when that girl was murdered," she says, wistfully, "to discover one of the old magics and use its own terms to trick it into making her sister's house a protected place? Brilliant."

She's not wrong. Contemplating what she did, the pure brazen audacity of it, I think I'm actually falling in love.

"It would require the post be manned by loyalists, if not actual patriots, though," Nicolas says when he gets himself back under control. "The magic wouldn't protect rootless cosmopolitans like Perenelle and I, for instance. Or most magicals, they think the Queen is just another muggle and the muggle parts of the realm don't count. Which is why she couldn't use it wherever she was hiding from this Riddle character, her husband was a pureblood wizard, no?"

"It'd work for me, though," I say, "Just about, at any rate, I'm a bit of a My Country Right Or Left sort of patriot, which is more in the spirit than the letter, I suspect. I imagine the real driver in this house is Vernon. Bless him, he's a small-minded jingoistic xenophobe, and fiercely proud of it, and those will have been the values the magic was first worked with. I'm going to guess that Lily didn't actually know how powerful the magic she was calling on was, or she'd have moved her husband out for the duration, possibly moved in with her sister since there was a reconciliation in its early stages at the time, and let Riddle fry himself on a magic he had no idea of, and unlikely to know about."

Both Flamels are nodding along.

I really want to tell Dumbledore about this. The look on his face, when he learns what he meddled with in his ignorance? It's going to be one for the ages.

I can't help but feel I'm not making some important connection when it comes to thinking about this magic, though. It nags at me, but inspiration doesn't come.

-oOo-

The week after the Summer Solstice - and the ritual and subsequent Bollocking Of Dumbledore - I make a breakthrough with Skriker. I get him to go for walkies around Little Whinging. I'm probably going to scare seven shades of shit out of anyone who can see me, but like all dogs he's a good listener and I've done a lot of good thinking while walking the dogs I've owned.

"Shame it took so long to get you around to doing this, lad," I tell him, "since there's a chance I won't be able to come any more."

He gives me a doggy huff.

"Well, of course you managed to be a good boy for centuries without my help, but company can't hurt, can it?"

He perks up and points for a moment. There's a loud squeal of brakes and a bang from somewhere up the road, in the direction Skriker is indicating. There's a signed accident blackspot on the A-road that Little Whinging is on, and from the sounds it just claimed another victim. He relaxes after a moment. Whatever happened, everyone's going to survive it.

"See?" I say, "if that had been fatal I could have gone along. Done any talking you needed doing. Obviously that couldn't be a regular thing, but you've been such a good listener and I want to do something about feeling so obliged."

Skriker leans in to the scritches I give him.

"Yes, I know, being a Good Boy is its own reward. We still give good boys treats, and since you can't eat treats, well …"

He lopes off to have a good sniff at a lamppost. Checking his social media, kind of thing.

"Well, I'm going to have to be off soon. I'm going to wear my new body for the first time at the break of day and Dr. Hartlib and the Flamels are coming to see. It wouldn't do not to be there to greet them."

I steer us back to the churchyard and leave Skriker with much reassurance that he is a good boy, yes he is.

Dr. Hartlib and the Flamels apparate with a gentle pop into the back garden at Number Four a little after twenty to five in the morning. Vernon's still in bed and I've remembered to keep my occlumency down, so they can see me. After a round of good mornings we go into the garage and I turn the light on for the first time in a week. I note that the temperature controller is showing 37.6 degrees and about half the fan heaters are running. "Don't need those any more," I say, and hit the kill switch. The room won't lose more than half a degree in the ten minutes between now and sunrise. We take the time to check everything over. While the garage has been sealed up tighter than a duck's arse for the last week, that doesn't rule out screwy magical effects.

"Are we waiting for anything in particular?" Hartlib asks.

"No," I say, "the process is all but run. I could go straight in, but the optimum moment to take my first breath is sunrise after seven nights of growth. While I'm sure there's plenty of slack in the procedure I devised with all your help, I want to take no chances with the first one I've ever done."

"First one anyone has ever done," Nicolas Flamel avers, "while this was always a theoretical possibility, it was a solution in search of a problem up until now."

"If I'm right about the technologies of the next couple of decades," I say, "it might well be proof-of-concept for growing transplant organs in vitro. It'll require a lot of technical workarounds for the bits we did with magic, of course, but I shouldn't be too terribly surprised if this can be done in mundane labs by the middle of the 21st century. The first actual cloned mammal is only ten years or so away, after all."

Before we can get into the interesting speculations, Perenelle has her watch out and forestalls us. "One minute," she says, "how do you want to do this?"

"Well, if you undo the seals - they're simple bow knots, just pull an end - and lift the lid smartly as I go in, I should be fine from there. I could probably do it myself from the inside, but I'd very much like to go with certainly being able to take a first breath that isn't whatever outgassing the inside of the vessel has filled up with."

There's definitely a body in there, of a suitable size to be a child somewhat larger than Harry. It's blurred by condensation all over the inside, so no details are visible. It's a healthy-looking pink, though, which is a good sign. We're about to get a whole lot of data about the interaction of epigenetics and ritual magic, and it looks like Harry's genes are able to express as a rather larger kid than the average-height-but-skinny you get if you carry them in a normal womb for nine months and then keep the result in a cupboard under the stairs and feed it scraps for three and a half years.

Perenelle counts me down. "Three, two, one, go!"

Dead on the moment, I enter my new home. I blink sleep crusted eyes open and immediately screw them shut again. It's bright in here.

I feel dizzy, light headed, slightly floaty. Oh yeah. Breathe, you fuckin' idiot. I hear the lid lift off with a hiss. Low pressure, must've used up some of the oxygen from the air in here. Possibly oxygenate the mix next time? Install a gas lock?

I gulp in as big a breath as I can manage, hold, release slowly. I'm laying in lukewarm slurried sausage, and trying to do breathing exercises. Also bare-arse naked in company, I helpfully remind myself. I feel like I've run an hour of wind sprints. Not enough oxygen in the haemoglobin. A dozen breaths and the feeling fades. Which is cool, apparently I've been born fit. Through squinted eyes I look at my thumbnails, squeezing them to get a rough guess at my blood saturation. They come up pink with gratifying quickness.

I sit up, shaky as a newborn lamb.

"Well, come on, lad, say something," Hartlib barks out.

"Something," I choke out through a dry throat, to a round of chuckles. "Could murder a cup of tea."

"Come on, up you get," Perenelle says, in that brisk tone that I'm pretty sure they have courses in at NHS teaching hospitals, "and let's give you a once-over."

"Right," I say, "muscle tone's a bit rubbish. Give me a minute. There's towels and a dressing-gown on top of the freezer there, could someone be an absolute star…?" I'm slurring my words just a bit, having to talk slowly and deliberately. No muscle memory anywhere. I'm going to be weaving and swaying like I'm six pints deep for a few days.

It takes me a couple of minutes to get on my feet, and Perenelle comes through like a champ helping me get the goop wiped off. I'm going to need a shower still - preferably before what's still on me goes rancid - but I'm fit to be seen quite quickly.

While it's going on I'm vaguely aware of Hartlib - "Call me Sam, lad, I was present at your birth after all," - and Nicolas murmuring into pocket dictaphones and performing analytical spells. I think they both get samples of what remains in the sarcophagus, and I direct them to samples of the raw stuff in the freezer. They probably won't do much by way of analysis, I've been lucky to get as much of their time as I have, but even a superficial critique of my work from these two is worth its weight in gold.

Perenelle gets a quick but efficient medical done, I get poked and prodded in all the usual places and my vitals recorded along with the results of her own analytical and diagnostic spells.

"Well," she says at length after borrowing her husband's dictaphone to rattle off a couple of minutes of medical jargon, "you're an outstandingly healthy six year old. Surprising amount of muscle development, muscle tone is a bit below par, certainly, but far better than you really should have on literally your first day up and about, and unless I misremember my growth charts, you're big enough that you could pass for eight."

I've been looking myself over during all of this, and yes, I'm probably going to be the biggest, most jacked six-year old for miles around, if not in all England. Perfect eyesight into the bargain, which is a bit of a bother since I rather like giving people hard stares over the top of my spectacles. "Harry," I sigh, putting two and two together. "What do you care to bet he got enthusiastic about how he expected me to turn out when he was filling that bottle of words?"

That gets me a round of chuckles.

"Magically speaking he's a powerhouse much as all bright children are," Nicolas opines, "and you can't say you weren't warned. I sent you those monographs for a reason."

"I'm not complaining," I remark, "although I was hoping to come out at least looking unremarkable. It's not like possession, either. There was a whisp of what might be developing consciousness in here, but it evaporated when I took up residence. I feel … connected."

"Ownership is important," Sam tells me. "You bought all the raw materials and did all the making yourself, and young Harry, I should imagine, wouldn't have dreamed of treating any of his contributions as less than whole-hearted gifts. From what Perenelle tells me, he's a sweet child."

Perenelle nods and smiles along with that assessment. She rather took to little Harry last week, and I suspect he's in for at least birthday cards from her. I'm pleased to see it: I'd trade a dozen fairy godmothers for an alchemist nana. "He's a little treasure," she says.

"He is that," I say, "and it does suggest that if I do this for someone else a formal transfer of ownership will be an important part of the process. I was expecting to be basically possessing an unensouled body, but I rather think I'm fully at home here." It doesn't augur well for my ability to keep spooking about at night, unfortunately. I may have to go back to the churchyard in the flesh and see if I can still see Skriker.

"Speaking of being at home," Nicolas chimes in, "you mentioned tea as practically the first thing you said when you sat up. I rather think I could stand a cup myself, these early starts are no joke at my age."

After we've had refreshments and a nice long chat about how the procedure went and what lessons might be learned, they decline to remain to greet the Dursleys when they get up. While they're all from times when the occasional good leathering was considered a vital part of childrearing, they're actually a good deal more disapproving of the kind of emotional abuse the Dursleys were handing out than most modern folks would be.

When I pass comment on that, I learn that it's because Obscurials are a thing. Not by that name, though, nor likely to kill the child. "The point," Perenelle tells me, "is that magic proceeds from the soul, mind and heart, and wounds thereto pervert the magic in ways terrible to behold. Monsters are born in the imagination of suffering children. Had little Harry's torment gone on much longer, something terrible might well have woken in him."

"Monsters from the Id," I murmur, although I'm confident Harry would have managed, he did in the books and movies after all. I'm pretty sure the Dursleys would have slacked off somewhat as the years went on. What I saw of Petunia's behaviour was nastier than what appears in the books, but as Harry got older and learned to do things to her standards she would likely have gone easier on him. And, bluntly, Harry may well have been tough enough to cope anyway. Some people can take the kind of emotional damage that makes basket cases of the rest of us and come out no more than a bit quirky.

All three of the alchemists present get my reference though, active in the scientific (and therefore nerd) community as they are. Sam's the one to remark on it, "I'm pretty sure someone involved with that movie had seen what could happen, or had heard stories. There was an incident in New York in the 20s, which was never adequately covered up. Another, shortly after, in Paris, that Nicolas was present for, was kept better concealed largely because Grindelwald and the Thule lunatics were getting going then."

I'm pretty sure he's talking about the events of the Fantastic Beasts movies, but I'll have to do some research to figure out how well the films told the stories. From everything I've seen so far, I suspect the answer is 'not very'.

"Obviously," Nicolas continues, "there were reports back then about Grindelwald trying the deliberate creation of such monsters as weapons of war."

"Not that we didn't know the boy was a bad hat from the faculty at Durmstrang. We've blackballed a couple of his known associates from the College since then," Sam adds, and I'm not slow to make the connection with Dumbledore's history with the Invisible College, "but even the accidental creation of such a thing is disgusting. It's part of why I, for one, am willing to excuse what you did to these people." He gestures to take in the whole house.

I shrug, rather revelling in the fact that I can. "I worked with the capabilities I had. I'm pretty sure they know the score now, are slightly better people even, so I'll be able to use less ethically-questionable violence going forward. They'll be able to choose of their own free will between decent behaviour and being, say, electrocuted." I open my hand and make sparks crackle between my fingers and my thumb. Turns out transfiguring charges on air particles is quite easy, and for party tricks like this, doesn't even require a wand. Lightning from clear skies, or even something as simple as a taser shot, is a way off yet. The important thing, though, is that this is the first test of magic in my new body. Result: all in working order. Better than the physical side, although I can feel an improvement in even the half hour since I first sat up.

That gets me a round of chuckles, and a bit of a discussion of the magic involved going. It's about seven when they all step outside - as etiquette requires - to disapparate.

-oOo-

It's half past seven by the time I get out of the shower and dressed - everything I bought in advance is small on me, so there's shopping to come - and still early for getting the boys up. I was about to see if Petunia and Vernon were ready to get up so we could have a discussion about how we were going forward, but as soon as I step out on the landing I can hear how they've chosen to celebrate Vernon's liberty; I knew Petunia was quite pleased with how Vernon's health-and-fitness programme was turning out and the looks she was giving his body were making me a bit uncomfortable toward the end, there. Yeah, not interrupting that.

Which leaves me with the thing I'm decidedly nervous about. Harry was as excited as hell to see me in my new body - he helped make it after all - and it took considerable persuasion to get him to go to bed at all last night. Dudley picked up on it and we had to tell him there was a new person coming and some big news in the morning. Which means a bit of a Talk with that young man, and probably having to look in to getting the Dursleys registered as Knowledgeable Muggles. Petunia probably is already, but nobody at the ministry knows that Vernon and Dudley are living with an underage wizard.

I'm woolgathering. It's nearly eight by the time I go in to Harry's room. He's not awake yet, I doubt he got to sleep at any sensible hour last night, and he's half off his bed in classic little-kid sprawl mode. Easiest way to get him awake is to try and tuck him in and sure enough, a couple of minutes after I get him straightened up he stirs. After few moments of rubbing-of-eyes and blinking, I hand him his glasses and sit on the edge of his bed.

He puts his glasses on and blinks the sleep out of his eyes. "Mal?" he says, and there's that flash of unconscious legilimency; Harry has internalised that the person he sees isn't necessarily the person he's talking to, and his magic has figured out how to just know. A quick peek tells me he doesn't know he's doing it. I'm pleased with the change from baseline Harry, in a world that includes polyjuice and possession it's a damn' handy knack to have.

"Yep. Since sunrise this morning, Harry. Madame Perenelle said to say hi."

"MAL!" He yells and leaps in for a hug and immediately starts crying. And giggling. And hiccuping and trying to say absolutely everything at once. Comes time to master the Patronus Charm, this moment will feature. For both of us.

I lean in to the hug and resign myself to being thoroughly limpeted by the little man for a while. It's a good thing he wished me as big and strong as he did, because if I was his size? I'd be flattened at this point.

I'm letting him just get it all out of his system when I hear Dudley come in. "'Ere, geroffim!" he yells, "you're 'urtin' Harry! Gerroff!"

Sir Dudley's spurs start jingling in earnest, and he grabs my shirt and cocks a fist to wallop me.

Harry, fortunately, is quick to talk him down. "No! Don't hit him! Calm down, Dudley, it's Mal, I told you he was gonna be here all real today!"

I look at Harry with a cocked eyebrow, and he immediately goes a bit sheepish. "I told Dudley you used to be a ghost, an' you were telling his dad how to do magic to make you real."

Dudley's frowning. He lets go of my shirt and steps back. "Thought that was a joke. Magic's not real, 'cept on the telly."

I give him a grin. "Well, that's what everyone thinks," I tell him. "Have a sit down, and we'll let you in on the secret."

Dudley goes all wide-eyed.

Once I've got all three of us sat cross-legged on the bed, Harry leads off with "Mal can do magic, only it's dead secret."

"Mal's just a kid, though?" Dudley's confused. Which is better than his other emotion, angry.

"I'm sort of a kid and sort of not," I tell him. "I used to be a ghost, but I helped your Dad and Harry to do special magic to make me real again. And magic is real, look!" I hold up a hand and do the Light of Re.

"Cor!"

"Brilliant!"

It's the first time I've demonstrated that spell to either of them.

"Can I learn to do that?" There's a hunger on Dudley's face, and if it were possible for him to learn magic I suspect his reluctance to do schoolwork would be spit on a hot stove in the face of that desire.

"Not that one," I tell him, "Sorry. I can only do that because I used to be a ghost. Harry might, because his mum and dad were magic. Your mum's only a bit magic so you can't do spells. Which is a bit rubbish, I know, but you've still got magic in the family with Harry and me here."

"You're family? Like a cousin or something?"

"Sort of. It's complicated, don't worry about it. I'm a grown-up who can turn into a kid with magic, and I'm here to help Harry with his magic, but I reckon we can be friends. We can play footy and stuff, right?"

"Right!" Dudley understands footy, and is looking forward to rugger. Attempts to get him alongside cricket have proven fruitless, alas. Which is a shame, he's got quite a lot of focus for sports, he'd probably be pretty good.

"Right!" You've got to keep it simple for Dudley. "What's really important, though, is that magic is a secret, like Harry said. You can't talk about it outside the house, and not even in the house if anyone except me, Harry, or Mum and Dad are here. People get really weird about magic even though it's really cool. It's like having a superhero in the family, you can't tell anyone."

"Harry's a superhero?" Dudley's credulity is clearly straining at this one. Superheros are people like Spiderman and the Hulk. Harry's the poor little shrimp that used to live in the cupboard, who we don't call 'freak' any more on pain of a scolding.

"Will be when he grows up, won't you Harry?" I give Harry a thumbs-up, and he gives me two in return.

"Can I be a superhero?" Dudley's persistent, I'll give him that.

"Well, you can try," I tell him. "Maybe be one like Batman, or James Bond. Do really well at school and train hard. But you can still be great some other way, like if you get really good at footy or rugger like your dad wants you to be?"

Dudley nods at that last bit. I've made superheroing sound quite hard, after all. I just lightly touch his mind and make him feel like keeping magic a secret is really, really important. It won't guarantee he doesn't slip, but the kid needs all the help he can get.

Then it's time to demonstrate the turning-back-into-a-grownup thing. The boys find my dressing in grown-up clothes pretty funny - I'm hoping this stuff will fit, I bought baggy trackies and t-shirts, good enough to go out in to buy stuff in whatever size I turn out to be - and are hugely impressed when I drink a measured dose of Ageing Potion to make myself twenty-five for the next twelve hours.

I'm not unimpressed with the results myself. I get the boys to help with a pencil and a doorframe to discover I'm somewhere around six foot four. I'm used to being a big lad and reasonably fit with it, but this body is built like a brick shithouse. For the first time in my existence, I have visible abs. It's all still a bit squishy, because whatever Harry was visualising when he contributed to the magic that made me, it didn't involve the muscle tone that this level of development should come with. A couple of dozen press-ups with two giggling little boys sat on my back is still pretty easy to do, though.

Over breakfast - a fry-up, which Vernon and Petunia join us for while exchanging looks that go right over the boys' heads but which I have to stay thoroughly poker-faced for - I let the boys know that I'll be out today getting clothes that fit me since I guessed completely wrong, but we can go out and have a bit of an expedition next weekend. And, no, even though I can pretend to be a kid, I'm not coming to school with them.

Once they're off out for some outdoor playtime Vernon's first to confront me. "I don't suppose we have any choice about you living here?" he asks. I'm quite impressed with his new-found ability to moderate his tone. He's got cause to be annoyed at me after all, for all the good I've done him, but he still keeps it within polite bounds. Getting laid for the first time in a couple of years probably didn't hurt.

I'd already decided to show at least a little respect. "In the short term? Not really. There's still a certain amount to do to get things right around here, and I'd have to make other arrangements if you want Harry and me out. Longer term, though, I rather hope to persuade you that it's a good thing to have us around. Dumbledore didn't do anything to help you cope with raising a young wizard, and a few things to hamper you. One of which is tying the defensive spells Lily raised to young Harry, and I'm sorry to say that things are going to get nasty again. Remember all the violence and terrorism of the seventies? A lot of that was wizard criminals, and right now this is one of the safest houses in the country. Which means you want Harry here to help keep Dudley safe, and keeping me here with Harry means the magic side of things is a weight off your mind too." I am going to buy a house nearby - the Lawson Boom hasn't started yet so prices are reasonable. The distant relation who moved nearby is a lot less out of the ordinary than the distant relation who straight-up moved in, after all, and nobody's going to be watching closely enough to be certain where I'm actually living.

He huffs a little over that. "Sort of see your point. Not sure we've got the space, even with that clever tent thing, though. And if we get visitors who're like Pet and can see through things like that, it'll give the game away, won't it?"

I have, as it happens, already thought about that. "Well, you know I've got plenty of money. How do you feel about a loft conversion, my treat? I reckon you can get an extra bedroom or two up there, and it lets us move the tent up out of the box room where people can stumble over it. A fifteen-year lease of the top floor to me at a peppercorn rent, and you get the increased property value when Harry and I move on," Vernon's pretty easy to handle if you've got the wherewithal to bribe him, "and while I'm here you've got a trained lawyer on the premises for all those little hiccups life throws at you, a spare adult for when the boys get boisterous, and a wand for if the magicals make a nuisance of themselves. Plus, you know, I'm a millionaire, which gives me a whole range of other useful capabilities."

He's nodding as I repeat the points I've been making in our dream-therapy sessions. I suspect he's raising objections for form's sake. Probably to re-assert himself with his wife, who he hasn't consciously spoken to in nearly a year, not that they haven't re-made their acquaintance in vigorous fashion this morning. I've been high-handed with him and his family, and I can forgive him for being a bit grumpy about that. Not to the point where I'd actually apologise to either of them, they'd have to be a lot more contrite about the way they treated the boys first, but I'm certainly willing to be understanding about their level of upset. Not least because I've spent most of a year coaching him in how to be angry in a more socially-acceptable way. He might even have a small hope of one day using his anger constructively.

It takes me most of the rest of the week to get a full wardrobe for both my identities bought, not least because as an adult I don't fit standard sizes and it's hard to find options that don't basically involve dressing like a nightclub bouncer. I get the basics and put the bank's concierge service on the lookout for a tailor who's got room on his books for a big lad; given their client base I foresee visits to Savile Row in my immediate future. I'm hampered a bit by the need to not be terribly publicly visible until Petunia has circulated the cover story: a cousin from Harry's side of the family who's finally back in the country after years spent 'working overseas' and staying to 'convalesce' for a while along with his 'nephew' who'll be boarding with the Dursleys while 'dad' is easing back into work and hunting for a house nearby. We go with 'international finance', a subject which I can be convincingly boring about to all but an actual expert, and which does have bizarre working hours and occasional long absences on business trips. Some of which may be genuine, Perenelle has mildly hinted about a job with the investment fund she runs.

If I'm going to do that - as a long-term thing, Harry's welfare is my main concern now - I need to get some qualifications under my belt, which will help build my new identity into the bargain. Mostly that's just booking examinations in material I already know - a handful of O and A levels - and getting a brochure from the Open University to see about a degree. I'm inclining toward mathematics on the basis that that's foundational to the science side of alchemy that I can pick up 'on the job' as I go along, but it's going to be a couple of years before I have to decide as I've got two exam seasons to get through before I can even apply.

-oOo-

It takes a bit of practise, and a few nights spent dreaming like a normal person, but I finally figure out how to get out of my own body. Tom's memories aren't any help, as he wasn't starting from the same place I was, but I'm reassured to discover that having a body of my own hasn't actually changed what I've become since dying. I'm still essentially a spirit, although how that differentiates me from the common run of humanity - luminous beings are we, and all that - is a question for the theologians and other peddlers of metaphysics.

The trick is applying Tom's lessons in lucid dreaming - one of the critical parts of learning Occlumency - so that I can decide to leave while my body is sleeping. It's not something I can do on a whim, unfortunately, so I doubt I'll be able to shed my body like a lizard does its tail in the event of danger. What it does let me do is go back to taking Skriker for walks. It'd be absurd to suggest I've got a pet grim, but we do definitely have an understanding, and he's a good listener while I go over possible plans for the future.

Which is a big deal. I'm going to be making a lot of the bad guys' plans impossible: my mere presence was already a flap of the butterfly's wings, so 'preserving the timeline' is a lost cause even if it wasn't a morally bankrupt course of action. I'm confident that as an Actual Functioning Adult up against the infantilised culture of the wizards I've got plenty of advantages, and in the short term most of what I'll be doing is expanding my capabilities against the day Riddle comes back within reach. If Harry does have to be the one to kill Riddle, I mean for him to do it while I'm holding the bugger down for him.

I'm not really talking much the night after Harry's sixth birthday party; tonight's walk is for decompression. It's the first Saturday in August and 'Uncle Mal' was worn out from running the barbecue for twenty boisterous little kids.

Dropping Skriker off at the graveyard, I apparate - still daren't do it with a body, not until I've had a good deal of practise with a spotter who knows de-splinching spells - back to Privet Drive. I reappear, as I've made my habit, high in the air above the house so as to have one last look around for anything out of the ordinary before going in. I'm more than slightly startled to hear unfamiliar magic being worked somewhere nearby.

Whoever it is, they're invisible, but I can localise the noise of their magic - brassy and ragged, like an overdriven trumpet - to the pavement at the end of the drive. A minute or so's hard staring and I can just see a faint distortion in the air. Whatever they're using to be unseen, it's not quite perfect.

I don't think I ought to let this pass without challenge. "Some might consider that rude," I say, and immediately apparate two paces to my left to hover over the lawn. No sense being in a place I've localised as a target.

The magic stops. There's a long, tense moment of silence. I keep my vision fixed on the spot where I saw the distortion. Whoever it is, isn't moving.

For the moment our mystery visitor isn't doing anything. And hasn't crossed the property line, which I take as a good sign. The obscurity of this address means that the list of people who this could be is quite short not notably criminal. The magic doesn't sound like Dumbledore's, but it's probably someone who knows him. The other group of magicals that know this address is the Special Circumstances team, but they've got the telephone number and would make an appointment during business hours. "Going to introduce yourself?" I ask, moving again as I speak and then apparating straight up ten feet or so. Dodging's so much more effective if you can do it in three dimensions. Not that anyone's shooting yet.

"Are you?" The voice is gravelly, with a hint of Merseyside, and I don't recognise it. With hindsight I should've gone through Tom's memories for known associates of Dumbledore and just put up with the vileness of what he did to the ones he caught.

"I live here," I say, bobbing back to ground level. "And while you're out on the public highway and you've a perfect right to be there, you are casting spells in the vicinity of my home so I'm taking an interest."

That earns me an amused-sounding harrumph. And then, "You this Reynolds character?"

"How I respond to that depends on whether you've been talking to Dumbledore or someone else who knows who lives here."

"Dumbledore. What difference does it make?"

"Well it means I start by asking if he told you his last visit here, he was committing burglary and muggle-baiting? Because that ended with him punched in the face, tied to a chair, and read the riot act about bollocks like that."

"He, ah, didn't put it in exactly those terms." Definitely Merseyside. They have a way of saying 'exactly' that's unique.

"Surprising," I say, "you'd think admitting burglarly'd establish a rapport with a scouser."

Another rumble of amusement. "I'm from Wallasey, as it happens."

"The difference is only a long hole in the ground," I tell him.

"To a woollyback, maybe." Not up to the usual standards of scouse chat, but it is a tense situation.

"Yeah, well, we all know why the Mersey runs between the Wirral and Liverpool. If it walked, some thieving scouse git'd rob it." The joke's a time-honoured one, and traditional in these circumstances. "Look, are we going to stand here all night bantering, or what? Because you're not going to get through the magical defences on this place, the witch who put 'em up was a genius."

"Dumbledore got in, according to you," mystery voice observes, "and he reckons he put up the defences on this place."

"Nah, all he did was monkey with 'em, for purposes he's not shared with anyone else. I'm pretty sure he didn't know what he was messing with, either. At least I hope he didn't, because otherwise we've got a wizard runnin' about with all that power and no common sense at all. He's lucky he didn't wipe half of Surrey off the map, it's seriously old and powerful stuff and as far as I can tell all but forgotten by mainstream wizardry. But anyway, he crossed the property line but the 'confusion to the enemy' part of the defence meant he came on like a complete idiot and got a smack in the teeth for his trouble. And, you know, still not hearing an introduction. Sorry to mither, like."

He harrumphs. "Name's Moody. Auror. And you're right, I noticed something was affecting my thinking from shortly after I took this job on, which is why I spent more time in surveillance and checking the paperwork than even my normal thorough practice. Anyway, reason I followed up is the suspicion Dumbledore raised about dark activity on your part. Serious allegation, that."

"From a burglar and muggle-baiter. You know, I had a lot of reasons to think poorly of Dumbledore, but I didn't think he'd be petty." I'm really pleased to make this man's acquaintance. In the books he was the one character with something like common sense. Magic is dangerous, magical criminals doubly so, and what everyone around him calls paranoia I call an appropriate response to the circumstances. I've got to be extremely careful how I do it, but getting this man on-side will be a massive asset. I'm willing to tolerate a great deal of roughness of manner in exchange for the one wizard with his head screwed on tight. Cross-threaded, mind, but tight.

"Not a denial," he says.

"Not a credible allegation, no need for a denial. Anyway, I'm going to go visible now, since someone has to go first. To your front." I drop my occlumency so I become visible. "As you see, I'm incorporeal and as such not actually a threat." There are spells that can affect ghosts which Moody probably knows - I know them via Tom, but can't cast them yet - so I'm taking a small risk here. The upside is that I'm not actually a ghost so those spells might not work, and I'm a lot faster than any corporeal target. My ability to dodge includes 'a thousand feet straight up in an eyeblink', which I've actually drilled on.

"You said you punched Dumbledore in the face. Hard to do that as a ghost."

"I'm not a ghost, and the muggle chap who owns this place did the thumping while I protected him from Dumbledore's magical attack. My actual body is indoors getting a good night's kip."

"What?"

"Yeah, it's a bit of a story. Which, sorry, not telling out here on the street in the small hours without verifying your identity. Let me see it's you, your description is pretty distinctive, and we can talk more. Maybe, if we can figure out how I can verify your identity, we can talk about you coming back during the day with guest-right?" It's an old magic, the binding of guest and host, and one not lightly crossed by a wizard with more common sense than a potted geranium, especially if enacted in the old and proper forms. One of the rare magical contracts that cannot be imposed without mutual consent, and strong enough that the ancient Greeks credited the enforcement of it to Zeus in his capacity as ruler of heaven. The entire Iliad was about a war started by violation of guest-right. It wouldn't stop Moody making an arrest, but it does mean that any arrest he might make must be strictly according to law and backed by a solid case-to-answer.

He drops the hood of his invisibility cloak - one-handed, he has a wand trained on me the whole time, sensible - and holy shit is his face a mess. As I'm coming to expect of my time in this universe, he looks nothing like his movie actor, although the overall build is about right. For all I know, he could be the dead spit of Brendan Gleeson under all the mutilation.

"They don't teach you how to duck in Auror school, then?" I ask, hoping to lighten the mood.

"Sometimes taking a hit's the price of doing business," he says. "You mentioned guest-right? Not like I can't come back with a warrant."

"Well, you can, but if Dumbledore briefed you properly you know why you shouldn't. The point I'm driving at is that I reckon I have a lot in common with Alastor Moody, Auror of Repute, as regards the outcome of the last war and the unfinished business thereof. The problem, as I see it, is building a working relationship from absolute flat nothing and I don't see the real Moody, from all I hear of him, respecting me at all if I just take your word for you being who you say you are."

He chuckles. It sort of whistles through the rent in his nose. "And if Dumbledore is to be believed, you're not going to be exactly accommodating with an Auror whose job is hunting the likes of you."

I've no idea if an eyeroll comes across in my glowy-man-shaped-blob form, but I give it a go anyway. "It's at moments like these I regret that without a throat I can't give a good, loud harrumph. While I'm not read in on every last detail of your professional brief as an auror, hunting down spirits just for being spirits ain't part of it, or there'd be a lot fewer of the regular sort of ghost."

"I got told you were possessing a muggle."

"Which isn't actually illegal, and since he benefited by it, you can't really call it dark either. Be that as it may, what I did stopped two children from suffering from neglect and abuse, so even if you insist on calling it dark magic, it's not unforgivable and done in proportionate and lawful defence of others. Which is a defence known to wizarding law, I checked. If you were able to open an official investigation here, it'd end with you writing it up as no crime committed, or whatever the Auror equivalent reporting category is."

His eponymous Mad Eye stops in its local radar sweep and starts scanning the house. "Got to say the kids in there look pretty healthy to me."

"After a year of intervention, yes. Although one of 'em's me, and that body's brand new, it'd be a rum do if it wasn't in good nick. And abuse is more'n just beatings, you know. They were keeping one of those boys, the important one if Dumbledore was keeping track of which is arse and which is elbow, in near constant solitary confinement in the cupboard under the stairs."

"Let's just say, hypothetical-like, I was to accept guest-right, which if I accept it by name does verify my identity. What would we have to talk about over a cup of tea?"

"Well, we'd talk about you learning to use a telephone and making an appointment to come at a civilised hour, for one thing. If I let you in at this time of night and you wake up the Dursleys, well, Vernon has it in his head that punching wizards is fun. He stuck one on Dumbledore and hasn't shut up about it since."

"Be awkward, if nothing else," Moody agrees, visibly amused. Whether that's just on general principles of a wizard of Dumbledore's puissance getting thumped by a muggle or because he has current beef with the man I do rather wonder. "This Vernon'd be the man of the house, then? He'd be the one to grant guest-right?"

"He would, which is the other reason I can't do it right now. Although as I recall the house is in their joint names so Petunia could invite you in too. Be better coming from her, she's a squib so the magic'd hear her better, and the Land Registry will confirm that for you." Truth be told, I had assumed I could do it myself, but Moody has correctly pointed out the flaw.

He nods. "And as a resident here, you'd be bound too. Bit curious about one thing, though. You told Dumbledore you were dead, but you've got a living body now? How's that come to be? Magic can't bring back the dead, it's one o' them things everyone knows."

"Be more accurate to say that magic can't bring back the dead and gone. I was dead, but not gone. Not so much properly dead as inconveniently discorporated, I got some help from alchemists. How well it works as a long-term solution remains to be seen, of course, but I'm quietly confident."

"So this'd work with ordinary ghosts?"

That's a sharp insight, and it takes me aback for a moment. "Huh. I hadn't thought of that. It actually might, but I can't think of how off hand. Most ghosts can't possess the living, they've only just got enough magic to manifest, nothing more. Just speculating, here, but the ghost'd probably come back as a squib at most if they were magical when they were alive. Might be something to try if we can find a ghost who'll volunteer knowing that risk. Preferably one who's recently deceased so - sorry, that was an interesting thought, and I've been thinking hard about uses for the process lately. Mainly whole-body transplants for the seriously crippled, but the soul transference is a seriously difficult problem, and all of the approaches I've found in the literature so far have major ethical problems."

Moody's openly laughing at me. "If you end up going to Hogwarts like Dumbledore says, you're a dead cert for Ravenclaw. And mind you keep your eye on those ethical problems."

"I surely will." Although not sure about the Ravenclaw crack, since scholarship is a means to an end for me and has been for a long time. If I'd been sorted at eleven or twenty? Different story. "Now, back to you coming back for a chat. I've put a lot of my cards on the table, how about you?"

"Well, Dumbledore asked me to look into what you were doing. I reckon I went a bit further than he was expecting, and found all the records you turn up in on the muggle side. That led me to here, and, well, long story short, who that kid is up there in the magical tent in the smallest bedroom. Went and had a look at the court records for him, and that led me to Coutts and a lad who was in Hufflepuff a few years behind me. Nice bloke. Told me he couldn't say anything what with client confidentiality, but if he had a client's permission he could give a glowing reference."

I'm going to have a word with Huw. Bankers' confidentiality isn't nearly as absolute as the standard I hewed to as a lawyer, but he's still crossed a line. It's worked out to my benefit this time, but there's a proper protocol to these things and it starts with getting the client's permission, before which you neither confirm nor deny. However, Moody's the one in front of me. "You mention Dumbledore to Huw?"

"I didn't, as it happens. Should I have?"

"You had no reason to, and Huw was over the line as it was, don't think I won't be pinning his ears back over it, but his team found the evidence of Dumbledore's cockups that's the other reason he's sent you after me with only half a story. When we were reading him the riot act that came up too. I'll certainly authorise Huw to copy you with that file."

"We've a lot to talk about, then," Moody says. "Give me the telephone number and I'll call later this morning about a convenient time to come and talk to the Dursleys and, after that, have a long chat with you."

AUTHOR NOTES

Anyone want to bet that Riddle would be the sort that thought of love of country as mawkish sentimentality that nobody sensible had any part of, never mind cognoscenti like his magnificent self?

Anyway, there really is a solid historical record of invasion attempts of the British Isles being marked by incompetence and misfortune - Britain doesn't so much win against invaders as have them lose at us - and if there was any king of the English who was a wizard, it was Alfred the Great, who had mind-trick level powers of persuasion against his kingdom's enemies. The invasions that worked - 1066, 1135 and 1688 - were made by people who had an arguable claim on the throne, making them more like coups, and two of the three didn't even bring much of an army when they came. And since the magic is a protection of the realm first enacted in the teeth of the Danish invasion, it has a blind spot where civil wars and coups are concerned, but it does treat post-secrecy magical Britain as a foreign power.

It's not the only way to make sense of the protective magic around Number Four, but it's the one I've picked. And, of course, sacrificially-powered protective magic is something we know Lily Potter was read up on, so that's how she protected Harry personally. James's role is obscure: his valiant death may have been a part of the ritual, or simple courage to the last. We may never know.

The Open University is the UK's distance-learning institution of choice, and has been since 1971 when it was founded. If you don't give a stuff about the prestige of the institution or the undergraduate experience and just want to learn the material, it's hard to beat.

Geographical note: Merseyside, the urban area either side of the mouth of the Mersey, has Liverpool to the north and the Wirral - where Wallasey is - to the south of the river. They're connected by the Mersey tunnels. And unless you're really dialled in on the accents, they inhabitants are all a lot of bloody scousers. (I'm on both sides of the mutual pisstaking between Merseyside and the rest of Lancashire, because I was born in Liverpool although moved away early enough that I didn't pick up the accent.)

I stand by what I say about Moody. The Magical world is, in a lot of places, a very nasty place where paranoia is straight-up common sense. We only really get to know him from the acting performance Barty Crouch jr. delivers and the jokes others make about him: the couple of times he appears in his own right he seems like a lot less of a caricature. I've gone with a characterisation that is actually functionally paranoid, which means he does all the investigative legwork and can be reasoned with. But keep your hands where he can see them and don't make any sudden movements.

Finally, the Riot Act was the authorisation to use lethal force (and hang any taken alive) against any gathering of more than 12 persons, starting one hour after the Act was read aloud in their presence. Repealed in 1967, it survives as a figure of speech for either 'final warning' or 'epic bollocking' and usually both.

Fanfic recommendation: Lust Over Pendle, the only slash story I ever really got on with. It pre-dates the later books considerably, so it's AU from the end of Goblet of Fire onward, but the world-building is beautiful. It's not on any of the standard fanfic sites, but a google search for it brings it up handily.