Harry, Hermione and Lisa got a rather large surprise when they entered the transfiguration classroom for the first time after the holidays. Instead of McGonagall (who Harry expected to be back by now) or a standard substitute teacher, Albus Dumbledore himself was standing at the front of the class waiting for them.

Unsure of what was going on, the class came in and sat down. After giving the class his assurances that he was merely filling in for McGonagall, he taught a lesson on animate to inanimate transfiguration that made McGonagall look like an amateur. The trio was impressed by Dumbledore's skill, and as class ended they started talking excitedly about ideas he had given them. Hermione was especially exited as she could think of a number of uses for transfiguration in technomancy.

"Mr. Potter, if you could you stay behind for a moment?" Dumbledore asked as they were leaving.

Harry, cautious after the man set McGonagall on him, stayed behind. Lisa and Hermione decided to wait outside the classroom door.

"Yes professor?" Harry asked after the other students had left the classroom.

Dumbledore sat down at his desk and sighed. "Harry" he began heavily "I do not think that your current living arrangements are acceptable for someone of your potential."

Harry's eyes narrowed. While he may not like the Dursleys, at least he knew what to expect, and if Dumbledore was trying to interfere, then it would likely not be good for him.

Dumbledore continued. "As such, being your magical guardian-."

"Magical guardian?" Harry interrupted.

Dumbledore frowned "Yes, as Headmaster I am the magical guardian of all orphans and muggleborn within Hogwarts."

Harry's eyes narrowed further. He did not like where this conversation was going.

"As your magical guardian, I have decided to arrange alternate accommodations for you during the summer."

Harry clenched his fists. He refused to react just yet. Instead he asked in a tightly controlled voice "Where exactly do you plan on sending me, Headmaster?" Despite himself a bit of rage crept into his voice on the word 'headmaster'.

Dumbledore however seemed to ignore the warning of an impending irruption, and smiled as he said "Professor Snape has agreed to take you in and train you over the summer holidays."

Harry stopped holding back his anger as he glared at the headmaster with murder in his eyes as he quietly said, "You believe this is a good idea?"

Finally realizing that Harry was not simply calming agreeing (as he thought he would) or being grateful (as he might be if the Dursleys were really as bad as they should have been), instead he seemed furious at the mere thought. 'Still' he thought to himself 'it's not like he can do anything about it'.

Smiling at Harry, Dumbledore said "Yes. I think this is a great opportunity for you to learn potions from a man who is an expert in his field, especially as you appear to be hopeless in the subject. A few months of dedicated tutoring should bring you up to par."

Harry exploded "Are you positively INSANE, Headmaster?" he shouted, loud enough that Hermione and Lisa jumped outside the door. Dumbledore's face was completely shocked as Harry continued to rip into the man. "Snape is an abusive bastard who takes pleasure in harassing and abusing his students. He apparently has a special hatred just for me, as I am one of the best brewers in his bloody class and he continues to fail me regardless of what I turn in."

At this point Harry was standing before Dumbledore's desk, hair whipping in the breeze generated by his magic. "And you want me to LIVE with bastard?" Harry screamed at him, completely beyond reason. "How do you know he won't KILL me?"

"Now my boy, I'm sure professor Snape..." Dumbledore began only to be cut off.

"Oh, I'm terribly sorry, Headmaster," Harry began in a passable imitation of Snape. "The boy you sent to live with me, who I hate with all my being, just happened to read the wrong instructions while I was teaching him potions. He added the wrong ingredients and the exploding potion killed him. Oh well, he had no talent anyway, as demonstrated by his following the faulty directions I gave him, just like I do in class." Harry stopped and glared again before switching back to his own voice "And I'm sure you would just accept his word, too. You seem to do that quite a lot." Harry was thinking of the point's war, but Dumbledore's mind immediately flashed to Snape's role as a spy for the light. Harry gave one last glare at Dumbledore and stormed out of the classroom.

Dumbledore sat shocked as he tried to reconcile his view of the boy with what had just happened. He had hoped that the boy would look forward to leaving the Dursleys, and then be crushed by the abusive care of Severus. Coupled with the loss of hope for a better family, it might have made up for the lack of abuse the boy suffered at the hands of the muggles.

Instead, the boy seemed completely opposed to the idea, which meant that he would blame him as well as Severus for the abuse. That was unfortunate given that they would have to work together to kill Voldemort later, but it was imperative that the boy be abused to harden him for the war, regardless of who he blamed.

After storming out of the transfiguration classroom Harry, followed by the girls, went not to the library (their usual haunt) but instead went the quidditch pitch. Harry had discovered during flying class that flying was fun and relaxing. The captain for the Ravenclaw quidditch team was impressed by his flying, but no first years were allowed on the quidditch team, so he was thinking about playing next year. He wasn't a sports fanatic, but he thought the game might be fun. Not having observed a game yet (he was usually in the library during matches) he wanted to reserve his decision until he actually saw a game. In the mean time, he was allowed to practice flying on the school brooms as much as he wanted (providing there were brooms available, which there usually were). After his argument (if one could call it that) with Dumbledore, Harry desperately needed to relax, and the sky offered the easiest way.

After flying for a few hours (with the girls watching him worriedly), Harry came down and explained what Dumbledore had said. Even Lisa was outraged by what he had suggested, and when Harry said he thought Dumbledore would do it anyway, it was the last straw for all three of them.

Hermione and Lisa owled their respective parents about the incident and said they planned on leaving Hogwarts after their first year. Harry had Lisa's owl carry his message to the Dursleys, not having one of his own.

After that, for the rest of term, Harry, Hermione and Lisa spent as much time as possible copying the books from the Hogwarts library. Of course to do this they had to use a modified replicating spell that Harry created. He started with a simple Gemino spell, designed to make illusionary (but physical) copies of something, and then he modified it so the illusions settled into matter instead of energy. The result was a spell that could replicate any book, no matter how old, worn, valuable, or spelled. Unfortunately, the spell could not duplicate any spells on a book, which was both a blessing and a curse. On one hand, that meant they could copy the restricted section without tripping any alarms. On the other hand in meant that any pictures with a copied book were no longer moving.

During this time, McGonagall finally managed to apparate out of the mental hospital she was trapped in and return to Hogwarts. After learning what Harry had done to his transfiguration teacher Dumbledore was furious and assigned Harry and Hermione a full month's worth of detentions. They pretended to go, but when Filch ordered them to clean a room without magic they simply confounded him, cleaned the room with a few quick spells and left, leaving Filch to think they had been there for hours. As a result, the detentions did not cut into their library copying time very much at all.

At first, Hermione had objected to using magic on Filch in such a dishonest manner. That lasted until Harry pointed out that they were assigned the detentions for the crime of resisting a kidnapping attempt and following the law. With that reasoning, Hermione figured that Dumbledore had no just reason to assign the punishment, so they were justified in using magic to avoid it. When she said as much Harry smiled proudly, and Lisa just shook her head in exasperation.

As the year came to a close, the parents of Hermione and Lisa met with Harry's aunt to discuss what they were going to do. They could not just withdraw their children from Hogwarts, especially not when the headmaster had such an unhealthy interest in Harry. The Turpin's planed on homeschooling Lisa, while the Grangers were moving to America to get Hermione into Salem School of Witchcraft. They had considered staying in Britain, but the other magical schools in Britain were not up to even the low Hogwarts standards, so they would do more harm than good. Fortunately, they had a contact across the Pond that would be able to help them set up a new dental practice after they moved.

Harry's aunt, concerned about what the headmaster would do when Harry disobeyed his order to go live with an abusive teacher, asked the Grangers to take Harry with them. The Grangers didn't mind, but in order to enroll Harry in a school legally, they needed to be his guardians. Regretfully, Petunia signed guardianship of Harry over to the Grangers to keep him out of the clutches of Dumbledore. All three families promised to stay in touch, and then the Grangers and Turpin's left the house on Privet Drive.

On the last day of school, Snape told Harry not to bother with the train. In fact he said "I have no intention of waiting eight hours for you in London when there is a perfectly good fireplace here."

Harry, not knowing about floo travel, was worried that Snape was planning to kill him right off the bat, so he cast a variation of Lisa's illusion ward to place an illusionary copy of himself in his dorm room, then cast a notice me not charm on himself. While not as useful as invisibility, a notice me not charm would at least allow him to blend in better, and hopefully escape undetected. The real problem with such charms is that, one: if someone is alone they are virtually useless (at least at avoiding being seen, they do stop your face from being remembered though), and two: if someone was looking for you specifically and knew you were using a notice me not charm, they would be able to see you regardless.

Harry hoped that Dumbledore would not be looking for him under a notice me not and just assume that the illusionary double in the dorm room was him. Hopefully Snape and Dumbledore wouldn't realize that it was an illusion until the train had already left. Of course, that wouldn't stop them from waiting at the station for them, but Harry, Hermione and Lisa had already developed a plan to counter that.

The three of them split up, and Harry successfully snuck onto the Hogwarts express, only breathing a sigh of relief once the train began moving. They now had eight hours to stop Dumbledore and Snape from coming after them, and probably McGonagall too.

Lisa, in a stroke of genius, came up with the idea of writing a letter of withdrawal from Hogwarts, and sending copies to Dumbledore, The Daily Prophet, and the Hogwarts Board of Governors, explaining why he was withdrawing, and telling them he intended to find a better school in Europe. Harry loved this plan (though Hermione had some reservations) and they sent out three withdrawal letters from the Hogwarts Express.

Hermione was still worried that the Headmaster and possibly some of the professors would be on the platform, so they sent out another letter, this time to the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, asking for a few aurors to be stationed on the platform for the protection of the students. They also included the fact that Dumbledore had sent McGonagall to kidnap Harry once, and seemed to be trying to illegally place Harry with an abusive teacher who had no legal right to his guardianship.

When the train finally arrived, the platform was packed with people. Normally there are a few parents waiting for the students. This time there was practically every reporter in England, plus a squad of aurors, the Hogwarts Board of Governors, and Dumbledore McGonagall and Snape.

Realizing that slipping by unnoticed wasn't going to cut it with everyone searching for him, Harry decided to go the opposite route, and marched right out of the train and up to the reporters, who immediately started shouting questions.

As soon as he was spotted, nearly everyone on the platform started moving towards him. Knowing that Dumbledore, Snape and McGonagall would try to pull the "we are the adults, we know best" routine, Harry immediately started speaking to the press, answering the most loudly shouted question.

"Mr. Potter, why are you withdrawing from Hogwarts?"

Replying quickly, before any of the professors could get close to him to interfere, Harry said "The reason is simple: there are more professors at Hogwarts trying to harm me than protect me."

That statement brought silence to the platform temporarily, and then the reporters went back to mobbing him, shouting all manner of questions. The professors had stopped rushing towards him, and both McGonagall and Dumbledore were pale with fear. Snape continued to sneer, even as the Board of Governors moved towards them.

Harry continued, "The fact is, Professor Snape has routinely harassed and abused not only me, but a vast majority of his students, Professor McGonagall has tried to kidnap me once, and Headmaster Dumbledore has constantly been trying to insert his interests into my personal life, going so far as to illegally confine me to the castle when I would not tell him where I planned to go for my Christmas break, and now knowingly placing me in a home under the abusive and possibly lethal care of Professor Snape illegally."

As gasps were heard following his list of crimes, including those of Albus Dumbledore himself, the Professors were mobbed by small groups of the press while the governors were confronting them as well.

Harry spotted Hermione over by the wall that lead to the muggle platform; she was waving subtly, telling him to hurry. Quickly wrapping up his impromptu press conference, Harry said "After withdrawing from Hogwarts I am going abroad to search for a better school that does not have daily doses of abuse and illegal actions sanctioned by the Headmaster. Personally I encourage every parent who cares about their children to do the same. Thank you."

He walked through the press of people all looking to talk to him (either to question him or beg him not to leave) and made it through the barrier. His last sight of the Professors was them being beset by the press and the Governors while franticly trying to get to him as he walked away.

After passing onto the muggle side of the platform, he met up with the Grangers, and gave Hermione a hug. "We're free" he told her with a smile. "Dumbledore won't dare come after us after this."

Hermione nodded happily, but she didn't look quite as sure.

"Come on, you two. We have a plane to catch," Mrs. Granger said as they walked out of the station.

The Grangers had already prepared everything they needed, so they could go straight to the airport after picking up the kids. Harry had also made preparations. His collection of writings (those he didn't have with him in his trunk) were packed in with the Grangers books. He had transferred his money to an American bank (and had been very annoyed at the questions they asked) and redirected his mail to Salem.

The Goblins had convinced him that taking his money from Gringotts would not be in his best interest, so instead he transferred it to an American branch. The necessary records, mostly muggle as that was how they were traveling, had already been transferred, and visas had been issued to the family.

The drive to the airport was solemn, the Grangers and Harry spent the time looking around and realizing that they were leaving the country permanently. They had realized that before of course, but only on an intellectual level. The Grangers had been to foreign countries before, but this time they were leaving their home country, possibly forever. So they spent the drive looking around sadly at the familiar landmarks and places they knew that they might never see again.

Arriving at the airport, the Grangers and Harry (who had kept his last name in spite of the official adoption) went through security, and boarded a flight for Boston. From there they planned on taking a train to Salem, where they would find a hotel before buying a house. The enrollment procedures for Salem Academy required a permanent address, so they would not be able to officially enroll for a few more weeks.

The flight was long and rather boring, Harry and Hermione spent most of their time speculating about what their new school would be like. Dan and Emma slept a good portion of the trip, and the eight hour trip passed in a haze of boredom after the first few hours, and when they finally touched down in Logan International Airport both Harry and Hermione gave a sigh of relief.

They got their trunks and other luggage from the plane, and took a bus to the nearest train station. After a short wait where Hermione observed that they would be spending more time on trains in the last twenty four hours than planes, to groans from everyone else, they boarded a train and rode to Salem. The train ride was mercifully short, and the four travelers checked into a hotel less than two hours after arriving in America.

Dan got into a heated argument with one of the hotel managers over something to do with the number of rooms and beds they were asking for, but Harry and Hermione were too tired to care much about it. After they got up to their room (a single room with three beds) the four of them put their luggage on the floor and fell into bed.

HP****************HP**************HP

Petunia heard a knock on the door and dreaded the inevitable confrontation with the wizards. She walked over to the door and opened it. There, instead of a group of wizards led by the old basterd she was expecting, was a group of four normal people, three men (one of whom was clearly some kind of body builder) and a very attractive woman, waiting on her doorstep.

(A/N)

I realize it's been a while (nearly a year, where did the time go?) and while I could spend another ten pages explaining why this took so long, I'm just going to go with, I was really busy, couldn't write at all for four months, and the few times I could write, I was focusing on my revolutionary stories (DADA and Reality Seer) in honor of the various revolutions and uprisings happening all around the globe.

No idea when the next update will be, but I sincerely hope it will be in less than eleven months.

For those who are wondering, Lisa will not be dropping out of the story, but she will be scarce for a while.