Harry awoke, he was unsure what day it was, they all ran together at this point, he was unsure if it was even daytime yet. His foggy brain slightly comprehended that the sunlight filtering through the old outdated window treatments into the smallest bedroom on the second floor of number 4 private drive must mean that it was in fact daytime, but this fact was lost in his mental processing somewhere and he was unable to really understand it. He felt an urge rise through his stomach and into the back of his throat, he lolled his head to the side and threw up into a bucket that was by his bed. It was already half full of stinking vomit from the previous times he had done the same thing over the last few days. Flies swarmed around the bucket, every so often taking a moment to pitch on his face before flying off again. He had lost the strength to swat at them the day before, or was it the day before that. He was unsure. The stench of his body mixed with the oppressive smell of the vomit laden bucket created an odour that would make a normal person retch at the slightest whiff.
Since he had gotten back to the Dursley's he had been slowly feeling more and more off, the feeling of sickness crept up on him slowly at first but building with each day. If he was honest with himself it had started the day after the tournament but things were so crazy at that time he never noticed, not until he entered the perpetual boredom of Private Drive. At Hogwarts, he had to deal with the aged headmaster, Professor Dumbledore asking him questions about his little adventure in the graveyard. The professor was the only one that really believed him other than Ron and Hermione. No one knew what graveyard he was talking about, he had no real description of the place so they had been unable to locate it. Everyone he told had thought him mad, a long-dead man brewing a potion in a graveyard, it made no sense. He spent the remaining few days at Hogwarts with stomach cramps that worsened by the day. He attributed it to the stress of the tournament and the events after.
He had descended into near madness within a week of leaving Hogwarts, which is where he found himself now, sick, with a high-grade fever, jaundice, and vomiting. He felt like his body was ceasing all functions and he was unsure why. He was to sick to do anything about it, too weak to write any letters to his friends or his godfather, and the Dursley's really didn't care if he died, so they left him to it.
He spent the first few minutes of his semi-lucid day staring at a dust mote that was caught in an updraft, it was floating in the beam of sunlight that was entering his room from the window. He had officially given up on life, Voldemort won, whatever happened to him had clearly killed him and now he just lay here, awaiting his final breath. He hoped it came soon, he didn't know if he had it in him to persist in his current state for much longer. He craved a swift death rather than this slow downward spiral he was experiencing.
It wasn't long after that thought crossed his mind that he heard a loud bang. It echoed in his ears and he could feel it reverberate in his chest shortly after he heard it. The fog lifted suddenly, it was like driving out of a rainstorm, the grey impenetrable fog in his mind parted and he could suddenly think clearly, he was no longer sweating, he no longer had a fever and he felt good. Really good. Probably the best he had ever felt, strong, powerful, healthy.
He blinked his eyes a few times and shook his head, had it all been a dream? The vomit bucket with it's circling flies put that theory to rest rather quickly. He stood up from his bed for the first time in days and flexed his muscles, starting from his arms and working down to his legs he moved them all and they all responded just like they had not been motionless for at least a week. He had just finished his muscle self-assessment when he heard a light knock at the front door.
He could hear the faint sounds of his uncle, with his heavy elephant-like footfalls, make his way to the door and the creak as it opened. He then heard a muffled yell followed quickly by a series of crashes and nothing else for several seconds. Harry leapt for his wand on his bedside table and with just his light blue boxers hanging limply around his hips, darkened in spots with sweat that he had expelled due to the fever, he bolted out the door to his bedroom and to the top of the stairs.
Leaning with her shoulder against the wall in the middle of the hallway twirling a wand between her fingers was a girl around his age. She was rather short, even for a girl, at just over 5 feet tall. She had silky black hair that cascaded down over her shoulders for several inches and framed her face in loose curls, her eyes, while a little too far for Harry to accurately see, looked to be a grey-blue colour. She had a slight smirk on her full slips and her thin petite body was covered in a knee-length gold dress made of a slightly shimmery fabric and that was covered in a black tailored robe she had left open but that cinched her at the waist. She was wearing a pair of black open-toed heels with gold accents that matched her dress. Upon seeing Harry, in nothing but his sweaty boxers, standing at the top of the stairs she widened her smirk and chuckled lightly.
"Who are you?" he demanded, his voice wavering slightly due to the only thing he had used his mouth and throat for in the last week was to expel vomit. He raised his wand and pointed it at her with his words. She darkened in spots with sweat that he had expelled due to the fever, someone he recognized.
"Put that away before you hurt yourself, dear." She said with a slight shake of her head and a roll of her eyes. The action reminded Harry of what Hermione sometimes looked like when Ron did or said something childish and rather stupid.
"Who are you?" Harry ground out once more through gritted teeth. She squared his stance preparing to throw a spell at the woman. He didn't know who she was, but he did know that she should not be in his relative's house. And where were those relatives...
"Come, Harry, we have a lot to discuss." She said with another head shake before she pushed herself off the wall she was leaning on, turned around, and strode into the sitting room of the home. Just after entering the sitting room of the house, she stuck her head back around the corner and eyes him once more. "And put some clothes on, your relatives may be uncomfortable with you in such a state of undress, though I personally find it amusing."
She gave a lazy flick of her hand and Harry was smacked with clean clothes that came flying out of his room and forced their way onto him. The pants split open at each leg before wrapping themselves around his legs and resewing themselves perfectly, and a light t-shirt ripped at the seams and pushed it's way over his head like a poncho before also resewing itself back to its original state.
He stared at himself in shock, who was this woman and what was she doing here? She didn't seem like she wanted to hurt him, at least not now, that meant that she was most likely not a death eater, they would have started firing curses at him as soon they noticed him. She also didn't seem like she was concerned that he would fire a spell at her. No sane person, when faced with an opponent, would ever turn their back and walk away from them.
He crept down the stairs and followed her into the sitting room. His uncle, aunt, and cousin were all sitting together on the ugly flower print sofa and staring ahead as if they were waiting for him. He took little notice of them at first but quickly realized that their postures were all wrong. It looked like they were sitting normally at first but they were unmoving and clearly frozen in positions that seemed odd to Harry, his relatives never cared much about him at all, why would they be waiting for him, and why was his uncle not screaming at the clearly magical woman in his house?
Things slowly clicked into place for Harry over the span for several seconds, his relatives never moved from their position on the sofa, not even one millimetre. They were frozen, this woman had them frozen in place.
He dove out of the sitting room and took cover behind the wall, His shoulder banging into the floor as he dove and scampered to cover. Perhaps his earlier interpretation of the woman, who was sitting primly in a wingback chair with her knees together and her feet folded and tucked back under her legs like a high society lady, was incorrect. Perhaps she was a death eater after all.
"What do you want?!" He screamed at her from his hiding place kneeling down hidden behind a wall.
"I just want to talk to you Harry, as I have said, we have important things to discuss." She replied, clearly getting impatient with his constant need to ask who she was and what she wanted.
"Why did you put a body bind on my relatives?" He questioned as he darted his head out of the cover of the wall and back in again in the blink of an eye, trying to see if she had moved from her position. She hadn't, she was still sitting, feet tucked under the chair, hands together in her lap holding her wand.
"The older fat one was yelling and the woman was screaming, it was annoying and it bothered me. I had intended to kill them at first but thought that might bother you for some reason." She supplied mater-of-factly. "Now come out from behind that wall, if I actually wanted to hurt you something so flimsy as a muggle wall wouldn't protect you anyway, I'd just blast a hole through it."
She had a point he thought. She could have killed him a dozen times in the last two minutes. Harry slowly stood up and walked out from behind his cover, keeping his wand pointed at her the entire time. She never bothered to return the threat and just smirked at him as if he presented no threat to her and that his show of force was merely amusing. The same look a parent would give their young children when they threaten to run away from home.
"Sit Harry." She coaxed gently flicking her wand carelessly and making a comfortable chair appear behind him. The chair was plush, with squishy arms and a soft cushion upholstered in a dark crimson, the legs were wooden and intricately carved to look like the head of a lion. He flinched at her wand flick but didn't react other than that, he was silently impressed at the level of detail in her conjuration though.
"I'll stand thank you very much." He answered coldly.
"Well, at least you have some manners." She said, almost as if to herself but loudly enough that it was clear she intended him and the other occupants of the room to hear.
The silence stretched for several seconds after her comment, hanging in the air like a balloon about to pop until the woman spoke again, "Introductions then I guess." she said.
She looked at Harry expectantly while flicking her eyes to his relatives, a clear indication that he should make the introductions for them. Without taking his eyes off of her he answered her unasked question, "My uncle Vernon, my aunt Petunia, and my cousin Dudley. And I'm Harry, but you already knew that. Now, who are you?"
"Nice to meet you Vernon, Petunia, Dudley." She began with a small head nod towards each. I'd shake your hands but... Well. Anyway, My name is Alexa."
"Hello Alexa." said Harry, he spoke as if they were at a social engagement together, but the bite behind his words belied their simplicity, "Why are you here?"
She made a show of very slowly unfolding her hands from her lap and holding her wand between just her index finger and thumb and extended her arm to its full length before dropping it to the floor between both herself and Harry. "Before I explain, I will warn you, Harry, it is in your best interest not to try to harm me in any way."
"Is that a threat?" questioned the teenager, feeling more secure now that she was without a wand. He had seen her capable of advanced wandless magic, but assumed he would be faster and more accurate than she with his wand.
"No." She said simply. "Rather a warning."
"Out with it then Alexa." He said once more, flicking his hand slightly as though to coax her.
"As I said, I'm Alexa, Alexa Riddle." She paused for a second, "But you may know me as Lady Voldemort, or the Dark Lady, I enjoy them both equally."
Harry wasted no time and lashed his wand forward while yelling, "STUPFY!" The spell was cresting his lips as soon as she started to speak the words Dark Lady, his mind having to take a beat to register the name Lady Voldemort before his body caught up and cast the spell.
He buckled over in pain the instant the spell left his wand as it felt like his whole body might explode from the inside out. Every muscle in his body contracted at once and he found himself in the fetal position on the floor after the pain subsided several seconds after it began.
"I did warn you, Harry. I'll give you some time to recover before we continue, that looked painful." She said as she studied her manicured nails, finding one of them slightly not up to her standard she snapped her fingers and a nail file materialized in it. She used it to quickly buff out the problem spot before tossing it into the air and vanishing it at the same time, the file just reaching the apex of its upward journey before vanishing.
"What..." He panted out as the pain receded from his body and he attempted to right himself.
"It appears as if you can't hurt me, but don't worry about your safety, the same would happen to me should I attempt to cast even so much as a jelly legs jinx at you right now." She explained as she placed her hands in her lap once more.
He looked at her questioningly, his wand still in his hand but not pointed directly at her for fear that somehow it would cause him pain again.
"Let me try to explain." She started. "Have you been feeling sick lately, and only just got better when I showed up at your door several minutes ago?"
"Yes." He answered shortly.
"That makes the two of us." The dark lady said with a shudder. "It took some deep research and not a small amount of speculation but I have figured out the answer. It seems that through a series of mistakes, circumstances, and the actions of myself, you, and that imbecile Wormtail my resurrection was... mishandled for lack of a better word."
She took a beat to wave her hand slightly and a glass of water materialized in it, she took a deep drink before vanishing it like the nail file, though not with as much flourish. She clearly did not need a wand to perform this type of magic.
"You see Wormtail misspoke several of the lines from the incantation, that started the process of this downward spiral and why I am no longer an adult but rather the same age as you. When you stunned Wormtail during your escape from the graveyard where I regained my body he fell he hit his head against the cauldron and died, which I speculate tore a small piece of your soul from your body. This happens every time someone dies by your hands and you feel no remorse or regret, it will usually reattach almost immediately, but in your case the very moment that your soul fractured slightly you took a portkey away. I believe that your small soul fragment attempted to seek out something to attach to. It would normally seek out its owner and if that was not possible it would dissipate quickly and over time your soul would heal. However, since I carry your blood due to my resurrection ritual your soul, while not able to find you, found the next best thing and attached to me. So I carry a piece of your soul attached to mine. The night you destroyed my body as a child the same thing happened but in reverse, a part of my soul was torn from me and attached to you as the only living thing close by. Are you following so far?"
Harry listened in stunned silence, it was all very complex but he was following, he interjected with a question, venom clear in his tone, "You mean the night you murdered my parents and tried to murder me?"
"Well that isn't exactly what happened that night, but I'm sure we will clear that up at some point. Regardless, with us sharing a piece of each other's soul we have actually stumbled into a very ancient ritual, this ritual was intended to connect two people in marriage, so as complex as this whole situation is, we are in essence a married couple." She informed him simply.
"We. Us. Couple? Bollocks to that!" Shouted Harry.
"I mean we could go over my research if you'd like, but it's true." She said while nodding her head. "I am quite an accomplished witch Harry, I do think this is the case. I've had to make several deductions in my research but the empirical evidence does seem to support my theory."
"What does this mean?" He questioned as he slumped into the chair she had conjured earlier, in the back of his mind he did note that it was quite comfortable.
"Well I still need to do some further research on the details, but if things are consistent with what I've read so far, if we get a significant distance apart then we will get sick, and eventually die. We have both experienced that symptom recently, now that we are both fully aware of the situation it is my belief that the symptoms will have a quicker onset, seconds or minutes rather than days, but the end result is still the same, death. We are unable to harm one another in any way, and I'm not totally sure on this point yet, but I believe that we are also unable to do anything that could intentionally lead to harm coming to the other person. Like for instance, I would not be able to order one of my death eaters to hurt you." She finished with a sly grin, as if knowing that was Harry's concern if she could not hurt him.
"Anything else in this twisted circumstance?" Questioned Harry. He put his head back onto the plush chair, how did his life always end up so complicated? He was now, if she was telling the truth, and the evidence pointed to her doing just that, by the rules of magic, legitimately married to his sworn enemy. The person who killed his parents and the most evil woman in the wizarding world. He was getting a headache.
"I don't think so, there is some mention of mutual pain, but I'm not entirely sure how that manifests if it even is a thing that we have to worry about. We are unable to hurt one another, and I felt no pain when you tried to stun me and injured yourself, so perhaps it's just rumour. It could also be that any pain caused to one of us that is not caused by ourselves is also felt but that seems needlessly complicated. But then this whole situation is a weird quirk of magic and a giant circumstance. So it very well could be true, we have no way of testing it at this point."
"Excellent." Said Harry dryly. "So where does this leave us then?"
"I spent the last day or so formulating a plan between vomiting and sweating. At this point we are clearly aligned with each other, in the past, we may have been enemies, and we may be again in the future if I can sort a way out of this, but for now, we are totally incapable of causing the other harm in any way. In addition, just being to far apart from one another will cause us to die, something I do not wish to go through again. So for now, and for the foreseeable future, we must coexist. And I can tell with beyond a shadow of a doubt that I will not be living in some tiny rats nest of a muggle home. You are coming with me." She said as she stood up gracefully from her chair and snapped her fingers causing her wand to shoot into her hand. She tucked it inside of her robe and crossed her arms while looking at Harry impatiently, like she expected him to jump up and follow her like one of her little minions.
"I'm not going anywhere with you!" he replied hysterically. "Are you out of your mind?"
"Yes, a little bit probably, but that's another story for later, what do you mean you aren't coming with me? Do you expect me to live in this house with you and your relatives? We need to stay near each other Harry, remember? Ergo we must live in the same place." She instructed as if explaining a simple concept to a child. At this point she really started to hope that he wasn't a moron, this would all be so much more taxing if he was a moron.
Harry was still sitting in his chair looking like he was having a mental breakdown. Which was likely exactly what was happening. She reached into her robes for her wand and with a few quick slashes and a flick, the entire contents of Harry's room came soaring down the stairs. The clothes were folding themselves and sorting into stacks in mid-flight, his books were arranging themselves and also stacking up as the flew through the hallway, even Hedwigs cage was shrinking in size along with other bits of his room as everything ended up in the air in the sitting room. His trunk came last and with a bang, the lid flew open and all of his possessions arranged themselves inside before the lid closed with a soft click. The trunk rose in the air once more and shrunk to the size of a deck of playing cards before soaring across the room and landing in Harry's open hand.
"All packed honey." She said sarcastically with a fake smile. "Time to go."
"Prove that you can't hurt me." He demanded, his mind still clearly not on following her to whatever lair she called home.
"And how would I do that exactly?" She questioned, her eyebrow-raising slightly as she looked at him for an answer. She tapped her heeled foot slowly in impatience.
"Cast a spell at me." He said before thinking it over. "No, wait! Don't!"
She had drawn her wand and pointed it at him, ready to cast a minor spell to prove the point, even if it hurt her slightly she could take it and they needed to get moving soon. "Make up your mind, we haven't got all day."
He took a quick breath and tensed his body before saying through gritted teeth, "Ok, but nothing deadly."
Her wand whipped out faster than Harry had seen one move before, the tip glowed a mustard yellow colour for a second before she grunted and dropped her wand, she managed to stay standing but buckled at the knees slightly as her hand flew to her forehead. The pain receded as quickly as it came and she retrieved her wand floor gingerly.
"Happy?" She questioned.
"What was the spell?" he asked back, not entirely convinced she wasn't just faking the whole thing to get him out of the house, what if there were protections in place in his relative's house that made it so she couldn't hurt him just here, but anywhere else he was at risk.
"Blood boiling hex." She replied nonchalantly.
"How do I know you weren't faking it?" He questioned back with a glare, his suspicion growing.
"For Merlin's sake Harry!" She protested, "I dropped my wand, my head felt like it was going to explode, what more do you want?"
"Say a spell out loud, none of this silent casting stuff you are so proud to show off. And make it one I know, then I know you're actually casting it." He suggested, slightly unbelieving that he was asking to have Lady Voldemort cast a spell at him.
"Fine. Torture the Dark Lady by making her try to hurt you, I see how this is going. Not very gentlemanly Harry, I'm slightly disappointed in you. One more spell. If you don't believe me, I'm not giving you the choice and I'll drag you out of here." She pointed her wand at him once more and braced for the impact she knew was coming.
"Avada Kedavra!" She yelled, the tip of her wand glowed green as a spell that Harry was very familiar with came rushing out of it before halting several inches from her wand and fading into nothing. Harry was watching the spell in terror and wasn't paying attention to Voldemort who had crumpled to the floor. He noticed her shortly after the spell disappeared as she was pushing herself into a sitting position.
"Ugh. Ok, that's it, I'm done proving myself to you, that was painful and we aren't doing it again." Her hair, so perfectly done before that spell was in disarray along with her dress and robe. She stretched her limbs and arched her back to test for any more serious damage but found none. With a flick of her wand, her clothing and hair were back to perfection and she stood back up, the pain now gone. It lasted only several seconds but it completely incapacitated her when it was happening, she noted that she would have to be careful about this in the future, she could do nothing that could be perceived as a threat to Harry or this would happen. She composed herself quickly and was back to normal when she cocked her head towards Harry, silently questioning if he was going to come along.
"This is such a huge mistake." He grumbled as he heaved himself up from the chair. "Huge. I cannot believe I'm doing this."
"Harry, I don't bite, well not hard anyway and never someone I don't know..." She trailed off. She finished with a soft whisper to herself that Harry could only just make out. "Too much Lex."
She quickly pulled herself together after that small falter in her commanding personality and finished her original thought, "While I would normally never say anyone can trust me, you are probably the only person in the world who does not have to worry about me right now. Some come along, I'm getting hungry."
"Yes, master." spat out Harry with a sarcastic glare. He had little choice but to follow her, he had no chance of ever finishing her rotten life if he died from being apart from her, and he could sense that it would only be him who died, not her because it would be him who was not holding up their end of the 'marriage'.
She spun quickly on her heel and glared at him. This was the first time since she arrived that Harry felt fear from how she looked and not just because of who she was. All things considered, she was not an intimidating figure, a short, petite girl that was objectively very pretty. If it wasn't for the fact that she was a mass-murdering psychotic dark lady bent on world domination she would never be able to really intimidate anyone. This look however frightened him. It was like daggers boring into him from her eyes, her upper lip curled slightly in poorly masked rage.
"Never address me as master again, even as a sarcastic little quip. Do not give me a reason to get creative with ways to make your life miserable." She said quietly but with force through gritted teeth.
"Isn't that what your little slaves call you?" Retorted Harry, his Gryffindor courage showing though, aided by the knowledge that she could cause him no real physical harm.
"Yes, it is." She replied, slightly calmer. "They use it as a sign of respect and because they are subservient and submissive to me. You are neither of those things."
She took a short calming breath before continuing, "This may come as a surprise to you Harry but I no longer wish for you to die. I have my reasons, and they are many and complicated, just like this situation. But things have changed and while I will explain them to you at some point I'm sure the means I use to get to my goals will no longer be the same as when I first rose to power. Along with that, by magical custom and law, we are legally husband and wife, many in our society will find that hard to come to terms with, but most of the purebloods will respect that and while they may not understand the nuance of this particular situation they will see you as my husband, even with your young age. And for that matter my newly young age. While I will never be submissive to you, husbands are not allowed to be submissive to their wives in our culture. This would be looked upon badly by my death eaters and that will reflect badly upon me. I know it's strange, but how most of my followers view you will suddenly change as soon as they find out. I will attempt to postpone that eventuality for as long as possible, but when it does come to pass I cannot let you make me look weak because my husband is weak. Do you understand?"
"And what if I frankly don't actually give a shit about you looking weak in front of your snivelling pathetic death eaters?" Questioned Harry as he approached her, he was standing right next to her at this point as they looked into each other's faces. It was the closest he had ever been to the dark lady yet he wasn't scared.
"I'll be honest with you Harry, I'm not really sure, I'd love to threaten you into compliance, but that will not work in our situation, perhaps I will need to use a carrot with you instead of a stick. But time will tell what we actually have to do. Now I told you I'm getting hungry, let us leave these muggles to their simple existence." With a sharp flick of her wand, she obliviated the Dursleys at the same time as releasing them from their bound positions. In the same instance she reached out and seized his hand in her own. His mind betrayed him quickly as he thought about how it was soft and how with her quick movement she disturbed some of the air around them and she smelled of lilac and lavender. That thought was quickly suppressed and he remembered how she was a killer and evil just as she disapparated with him. The feeling of being squeezed through a garden hose made him want to vomit, something he almost did when they popped into existence at their destination, but he had nothing left him to expel since he had been sick for the better part of a week and vomiting for several days already.
Dumbledore was sitting in his private suite at Hogwarts. It was a large sitting room, mostly oval in shape with a single flat wall taking up about a third of the oval. The oval was due to its position in a tower in the middle of the castle. A spiral staircase went both up and down against the part of the wall where the flat met the curve of the oval, there was also a rather large door against that wall as well. The door led to the castle proper and the staircase led to his bedroom in one direction and his study in the other. The floor, like most floors in the castle, was made of stone but he had covered most of its space with multiple plush rugs as the winter mornings were chilly.
He was enjoying a nice quiet breakfast, during the Summer he often took his breakfast alone in his sitting room, it gave him time to fully waken and begin his day at a more measured pace. His mind had been reeling for over a week now, ever since Harry had reappeared at the entrance of the maze, dazed but uninjured. When Dumbledore had asked him what happened to him all he could say was that he grabbed the cup and it took him somewhere, but after that, it was like he was unable to speak. Not as if there was something he was unable to say like he was under a curse or some kind of compulsion, but more like he just forgot what he had intended to say as soon as he was ready to say it. It was infuriating.
He had of course checked the boy all over to see if there were any spells or anything nefarious happening but he could find nothing, aside from some minor issued that he attributed to the stress of the entire year the boy was the picture of health. He even had Madam Pomfrey check his body all over for any runes that may have been carved into his flesh, still, nothing, not that he really thought this was the case, but he was grasping at straws. There was clearly something else at play here but he did not know what it was.
He was pondering this while buttering his toast when he felt a strange twinge in his mind. It took him several seconds to place what this was, his butter knife held stationary just inches from his toast, the warm butter slowly sliding off the end of the knife as he sat completely still. He knew it was a ward that had been tripped, but what ward, and how was it tripped? He dropped his toast and how now butter-less knife and made his way to his office as fast as his weary bones could manage.
A quick glance at one of the many shelves lining the walls of his office made his eyes bulge. A small copper cone sat inverted on the shelf, it had a slowly rotating ring of silver around its point and while it usually gave off a pale blue puff of smoke every few seconds it was now puffing a pale purple.
Dumbledore had no idea what that meant, this particular trinket was keyed to alert him about unknown people visiting Harry at the Dursley's. Any magical person who entered the property who was not keyed into the ward would set it off, dark blue for someone with no ill will against Harry, red for someone who wished him harm. Purple was not an option for this trinket. Yet here it was, emitting a purple puff every second and a half.
He quickly darted his eyes to a second trinket on a different shelf, this one a solid gold ball that pulsed and seemed to grow faintly in size following a steady beat. This was an indication of Harry's life, if the pulsing stopped, he had died. It was beating steadily. It unfortunately had no way of telling the condition of the boy, the pulsing was not indicative of his physical state, just whether or not he was alive.
Perhaps his ward indicator had broken? Maybe the Dursley's had kicked Harry out of the house and the wards were breaking down? Maybe Harry had died and somehow the gold ball had kept on pulsing so there was actually nothing to continue warding? The possibilities were endless but he could think of none of them that would be a good outcome.
He was still in his dressing-gown, a vibrant green ankle-length robe made of light cotton, so he bolted back into his private chambers and threw a real robe on as fast as his aged body could carry him. He darted back into his office to notice the puffing had stopped and the silver ring had fallen from it's suspended position hovering over the point of the cone and was now resting halfway down the body of the cone. Something was very wrong.
Being headmaster had its privileges. Such as being able to apparate through the wards surrounding Hogwarts. He was the keeper of the wards and as such afforded this right. With a soft pop, he blinked into existence at the door of the Dursley residence.
Nothing was on fire, no smoke, no damage, no muggle ambulances, all good signs. He knocked loudly on the door and Petunia answered, her face turning sour the instant she realized who it was.
"What do you want?" She nearly spat at him.
"Hello Petunia, nice day isn't it?" He said, affecting his grandfatherly tone. "I've come to check up on Harry, how is he?"
"I haven't the foggiest, he's been in his room since he darkened our doorstep with his presence. Much like you are currently doing." She replied as she attempted to close the door. He reached out with his foot and stopped its progress.
"I'd appreciate it if you would allow me to check on him myself." Beamed the old wizard, his foot still preventing her from closing the door.
"Fine." She acquiesced with a huff before moving aside and opening the door fully. "Just keep your freaky behaviours out of here."
"Of course my lady." He replied with a twinkle. Everything seemed to be normal, he assumed the trinket that had alerted him to an issue must have broken of its own violation. It had been running continuously for almost 14 years at this point.
Dumbledore made his way through the sterile muggle house and up the stairs to Harry's door. He knocked softly but there was no reply.
"Harry." He inquired softly with another knock. Perhaps the boy was still asleep.
He knocked slightly harder when there was still no answer and no sounds from beyond the door. "Harry." He said in a normal tone.
With one more knock, he slipped his wand into his hand and tapped the doorknob, ensuring it was unlocked before turning it to open the door. He slowly pushed the door open while saying, "Harry" one final time.
The room was empty. Nothing was left save for the furniture, no papers, books, clothing, nothing that one would normally find a teenager's room. The room did have a distinct foul odour that he was unable to properly place, but nothing more gave away the fact that a teenage boy should currently be inhabiting the room.
Harry was gone.