Chapter One - Rescue

Tonight, Tilly and her clan had set up their camp in a burrow, underneath a moderately sized copse of trees beside a Muggle playground. As the sun set on the last day of October, the air temperature had dropped quite considerably and environmental magic, even when cast by an adept elf, worked much better when cast on an enclosed space, rather than out in the open. It felt rather like her childhood, she reflected as Pastos set up a hearth in the middle of the camp. She vividly remembered her abject horror when she had found out how elves were treated here in Britain. If not for her mission, she'd have been extremely tempted to leave the country immediately.

On the continent, elves were born and nurtured in enclaves - protected spaces where wild or unbound elves lived freely in burrows underneath mounds of Earth. It was a simple and pleasant existence which she had grown up in for the first twenty years of her life before her magic had matured and she'd left to find a bond. There were no wild elves in Britain, and no enclaves either, and after first hearing about, and then witnessing, how elves were treated here, she hadn't been surprised at all. Young house elves here were born within the dwelling of their parents' bonded family, and were often forcibly bonded themselves within a matter of days. There was no autonomy here, no freedom of choice, no freedom to mature healthily or independently. Young elves weren't given time to learn the full breadth and beauty of their magic. Often, they weren't even taught to speak properly and ended up with only a broken knowledge of English, then punished, often beaten, when they didn't understand something. There was frankly no care for the elves at all, and it made her sick to her stomach.

While she silently bristled, Pastos had finished laying out the hearth and had set up the enchantments on the rocks around it. He lit the fire and all of the elves sitting around the fire visibly relaxed as the enchantments settled around them. Tonight wasn't a night to get wound up over British barbarism, Tilly decided and locked those thoughts away in favour of spending time with her clan.

She loved these elves so deeply. Her family had all died in the wars, leaving her almost completely inconsolable. Her bonded family had taken good care of her in those dark days, though even darker days came soon after when her bonded family had been attacked in their home. Now they too were all but gone; only one member of the family had survived, but they had been far too young to keep the elves bonded to the family magic. Her last connection to her bonded family had faded just hours after the attack, and it had broken her already shattered heart into even smaller pieces.

For weeks, Tilly had ambled aimlessly around the ruins of her bonded family's home, too broken to summon the magic required to apparate over to an enclave for the sympathy and comfort of her own kind. Thankfully, magic has a funny way of looking after magical beings, even when they can't look after themselves, and her turbulent emotional state had been effectively broadcasted far and wide in the hopes that some other elf would feel her distress and come to her aid.

That elf had been Pastos, who had honestly probably saved Tilly's life. When he found her, she was so incredibly weak that he nearly sobbed from the instant he laid eyes on her - she hadn't eaten in who knew how long, and her magic had ebbed to the point of being comparable to the embers of a once fierce fire. She'd been so despondent that he couldn't even get her to acknowledge his presence, so he'd just taken her into his arms and apparated her straight to his clan. They'd nursed her back to health, both physically and emotionally, and had welcomed her as easily as if she were one of their children.

Now, almost seven years later, they had become something of a third family to her, and Tilly felt exceptionally lucky to have known so many great and compassionate beings in this life. After hearing her story, the clan had rallied around her and made it their collective mission to try and find the last member of her bonded family for her to reunite with.

That mission had turned out to be practically impossible. Whenever they came across a new method to try and locate the child, they'd come up with absolutely no results. The infant certainly still lived, they knew that much, but somebody had gone to great lengths to ensure that they couldn't be found, even by elvish magic.

After a long while of fruitless searching, they had turned their efforts instead to caring for any magical child who needed help, and after the many years of war across Europe, there were a heart-wrenching amount of those. Tilly still held the vain hope that one day they'd find that lost child, even if just through happenstance. On particularly difficult days, that hope was often one of the only things that kept her going.

In front of her, Pastos stopped dead in the middle of his sentence, his large ears twitching as he looked up towards the ceiling of their burrow and the surface.

'Pastos?' she whispered, urging him to explain what he'd felt that none of the others had yet. He was by far the oldest in the clan, and much more sensitive to magic as a result.

Pastos frowned, and opened his mouth to answer, but ultimately didn't need to as many of the other elves huddled around the hearth soon felt what he had, including Tilly. Somewhere nearby, a set of extremely magical wards had just been forcibly demolished. A chill shot down her spine - she hadn't felt magic like this in a long time, not since the wars had come to an end. Moments later, the elves felt another wave of magic - this one they were, devastatingly, much more accustomed to: a child's magic screaming out for help.

One after another, the elves in Tilly's clan started to disappear, apparating straight to the source of the magical outburst. Without hesitation, Tilly joined them, focusing on the cry for help and apparating directly at it. All things considered, that decision could have been utterly terrible. As it was, it turned out to only be mildly terrible. She appeared inside a room the size of a cupboard, with the sounds of shouting and screaming coming from further in the house, as well as the roaring of a large fire, the heat of which she could feel even from behind the wall. As her eyes adjusted, she realised that the room she had appeared in was roughly the size of a cupboard because it actually was a cupboard.

Beneath the cacophony outside, Tilly could just about make out small whimpers and sniffles, and soon realised that they were coming from within the cupboard she was inside. She took a moment to actually look around the room she was in. Under her feet was a small muggle camp bed, tattered and ripped in several places. Atop that was a thin blanket which shook slightly in time with the whimpering. Outside the door, she heard what could only be somebody being thrown bodily through a wall, closely followed by the disapparition of five different wizards. A moment more, and she heard her clan members starting to call out to each other, organising themselves into helping in whichever way they could.

Satisfied that the major danger was over, Tilly knelt on the camp bed and slowly pulled the blanket away from the child beneath, revealing a shivering little boy with a mop of jet black hair and taped up glasses. He curled into an even smaller ball once he was revealed and whimpered more. Gently, Tilly laid a hand on the boy's head and made small shushing sounds.

'It's okay, Mister, the bad men have gone,' she whispered. 'I'll help you.'

He relaxed minutely and cracked open a puffy, wet eye to look at her, and his eyebrows shot up in alarm.

'My name's Tilly,' she continued as she stroked his hair. 'I'm what's called a house elf. I'll help you, I promise, but we need to get out of the house.'

As if on cue, the house shook and there was an almighty crashing sound from the other side of the cupboard door as part of the roof collapsed at what sounded like the back of the building.

'Come with me,' Tilly implored. 'I'll keep you safe.'

The boy nodded meekly and straightened out from the ball he had curled himself into. As he cautiously sat up, his messy hair fell to one side revealing a scar on his forehead the shape of a lightning bolt. Tilly's eyes widened as she recognised who this boy was, but didn't mention it so as not to spook him any more than he already was. The house was getting more and more dangerous by the minute. She held out a hand to him and he flinched away slightly, before slowly taking hold of it.

Tilly reached for the cupboard door and found the wood slightly warm, but not too hot to touch, so she pushed it open slightly. It opened into a hallway, which had unfortunately been repainted with somebody's blood. The fire hadn't spread this far yet, though, and the front door was open and not far. Pushing the door open fully, she tugged gently on the boy's hand.

'We need to go quick, out of the front door,' she explained, and he nodded his understanding.

The first half of their escape went off without a hitch, and almost got to the bottom of the stairs, opposite the body-shaped hole in the wall, before Bonnie, one of the other members of the clan, saw them coming from outside. Bonnie's eyes widened, and she shook her head frantically at Tilly, trying and failing to gesture subtly at the hole.

Tilly turned to look for what Bonnie was gesturing to, and immediately wished she hadn't. Unfortunately, the boy had turned too and vomited in an instant. Through the hole in the wall, the body of a rather fat man was pinned to the wall, the legs of a table sticking out of each of his shoulders. Even more disturbingly, what distinctly wasn't sticking out of his shoulders were his arms, which were lying on the floor in the middle of the room, next to the broken body of a tall, skinny lady.

They needed to get far, far away from this house, Tilly realised, and she tugged on the boy's arm, forcefully dragging him out of the door as more of the building fell through behind them into what probably used to be a kitchen. He stumbled and was sick again once they got clear of the building, and Tilly scanned the congregated elves, silently beckoning Pastos over once she spotted him.

'We can't take him back to the burrow,' Tilly said when Pastos reached her side. 'He needs more help than we can give, Pastos, and he needs to get far away from here.'

Pastos nodded his agreement immediately. 'They came here for him, and they won't wait long to try again. Take him to Monsieur Savant, he'll know what to do.'

Tilly nodded determinedly and squeezed the young boy's hand. 'I'm sorry for this, Mister,' she said before making the long and uncomfortable apparition to France.

They reappeared outside of the large, wooden front door of a quiet stately house in the north of France, and the boy retched once more, though evidently he had emptied his stomach last time. Without hesitation, Tilly knocked rapidly on the door, loudly calling out 'Monsieur! Monsieur!' as she did so. After only a few moments, the door creaked open to reveal a middle aged man in his pyjamas.

'Désolé, Monsieur, but we didn't know where else to come,' Tilly explained rapidly. 'Please, will you help him?'

Monsieur Savant dropped his gaze down to the sobbing boy beside her. 'Of course, Tilly,' he said, standing aside to let them both into the house. 'Of course. Set him down in the drawing room. I'll find something to settle his stomach. Perhaps put on the fire, too? It's a bit chilly inside.'

At that, the boy retched again, and Tilly shook her head a bit frantically. 'Perhaps not. I'll find some blankets.'

The rest of the night was long and difficult. Tilly tried her best to settle the boy down, but he was far too upset and sensitive to calm himself enough to sleep. On the rare few occasions where he'd managed to exhaust himself enough to pass out, he awoke within half an hour, sobbing again as he relived the night's events in his dreams.

After the third time this happened, Monsieur Savant made the difficult decision to give the boy some Dreamless Sleep potion. It wasn't a solution he liked as the potion often had side effects when used on children. Not only that, but it wasn't much of a 'solution' at all; it was, instead, more a delay. The potion wouldn't stop the nightmares entirely - it would just make it so that he didn't have to suffer them tonight. They'd face the exact same issue in the nights to come unless the root of the issue was addressed.

It was this final point that made Savant realise that he'd be sheltering this boy for much longer than just one night, and so he'd tasked his own house elf, Dalia, to adapt the bedroom next to his into something that a seven year old boy would feel more comfortable sleeping in. Currently the walls were painted in a very plain off-white colour, and it contained very little in the way of furnishings besides a bed and a dresser. It wasn't very often that Savant had overnight guests, so he had felt very little need to decorate it with much more than that.

It wasn't until the chiming of the ornate grandfather clock in the foyer signalled the arrival of eight a.m. that the three of them finally found a moment to rest and collect themselves, settling around a small dining table in the breakfast room. Savant lethargically rubbed the sleep from his eye and took a long sip from a large mug of hot coffee. Tilly sat opposite him nursing a herbal drink made with lemongrass, moss, juniper berries and honey. Her mother had taught her to make it when she was growing up in the enclave, and while it was utterly unpalatable for humans, it did wonders to restore the energy of elves. She had also made some for Dalia, who was sitting between them to Tilly's left.

'Did anybody from your clan find out who he is, Tilly?' Savant asked once their drinks had perked them up a little.

Tilly shot him a puzzled look, and Dalia quietly snorted in amusement.

'We didn't need to find out, Monsieur,' she said, her tone revealing how daft she thought his question to be. 'It's obvious, isn't it?'

'Maître be very good at missing the obvious, Tilly,' Dalia teased with a giggle, while Savant just looked between them, bemused. 'There be a scar on his forehead, Monsieur.'

The only change to Savant's expression was his brows furrowing. 'Is there?' he asked, and Tilly just shook her head in silent wonder.

'Yes, Monsieur. A very prominent scar,' she said, but he still didn't seem to be understanding, so Tilly clicked her fingers and in the air between them appeared a floating illusion of a rune - Eihwaz.

Savant's eyes practically fell out of their sockets as the drachma dropped. 'Surely not,' he whispered.

Both Tilly and Dalia nodded earnestly. 'It be him, Maître,' Dalia confirmed. 'He be looking just like his father. Dalia remembers seeing him a lot around Hogwarts.'

The illusion between them faded and Savant rubbed at his eyes again in stunned disbelief.

'The house we rescued him from was Muggle, though,' Tilly said. 'Not even Pastos could figure out why he was there.'

Savant sighed heavily. 'There were rumours that Dumbledore had hidden him away after 1981. Of course, much of the magical world believed them to be exactly that - rumours. As far as I know, the general consensus was that he died that night too, and that the British Ministry was just trying to cover it up in order to make the Death Eaters look less threatening.'

Tilly hummed thoughtfully. 'If the rumours are true, then it might be that he doesn't know anything about magic at all. He'd certainly be safest if he was completely removed from our world,' she mused, and Dalia nodded.

'And if that be the case then he be needing explanations soon, Maître.'

'Yes indeed,' he agreed before a shuffling from outside the breakfast room caught their collective attention. 'Well, there's no time like the present. Do come in, young Mister Potter.'

The young boy walked hesitantly in the room and relaxed slightly when he was met with smiles from all three of its occupants.

'Come and take a seat,' Savant invited kindly, gesturing to the chair to his left, between himself and Tilly. 'I haven't bitten anybody in years.'

-oOo-

Outside, the light had faded on the final day of the year and the moon was high in the sky. It had been two months since Harry had first been brought to Monsieur and France, and the Christmas period had greatly helped him to settle in. The nightmares were already becoming much less frequent, and he'd stopped flinching as frequently whenever Dalia lit the fire. He'd spent much of the afternoon with the elf, decorating his bedroom with some of his Christmas presents.

That had only just actually sunk in today - he had been given presents for Christmas. Though Harry knew that Monsieur was genuinely caring, a large part of him had still been waiting for the presents to be taken away from him, and it all to have been revealed as a cruel joke at his expense. That was the sort of thing he'd come to expect from the Dursleys for as long as he could remember, but the Dursleys weren't here anymore, and his evidence for that fact was still burned into his mind.

As he was finding places to put his presents, it had occurred to Harry that while this had been the only good Christmas he could remember, it wasn't the only good Christmas he'd have ever had. He knew that he'd been with his parents for more than a year before they died, and so his first Christmas must have been with them. That must have been good.

The thought filled him with an unfortunately familiar sense of profound longing for what his life could have been like if only his parents hadn't died. He also found himself feeling somewhat jealous of himself as a baby, being too young to take advantage of what little time he had with his parents. It was a silly thought, he knew, but one he couldn't help but have.

All of this musing had brought him to where he was now, standing in the doorway of the drawing room, watching Monsieur read the newspaper. Never before had he approached Monsieur to ask about his parents - or much of anything, really - for fear that he'd be shouted at and told nothing, as had happened when he'd asked Aunt Petunia. But, again, Monsieur was nothing like the Dursleys, and Harry's curiosity had almost grown enough to overpower his anxieties.

Almost being the key word, there. He'd determinedly ignored the way that his hands were shaking slightly, and that his heart was racing, and had made it all the way to this doorway, where he'd frozen the second that he'd spotted Monsieur. In that moment, his plan had suddenly become very real, and very terrifying, and he'd been stood here, unable to walk into the room for what must have been several minutes by now.

He deflated, realising that he couldn't bring himself to follow through with his plan, and turned to go back upstairs to his room.

'Where are you going, Harry?' Monsieur asked gently, and Harry froze on the spot. 'Come and sit down, and ask me whatever it is you were going to.'

Harry turned slowly and shrunk in on himself a bit. 'It was nothing,' he said quietly.

Monsieur smiled kindly. 'Now, I highly doubt that. It must have taken a lot of courage to come down here to ask me whatever is on your mind, and I'd like to reward that courage by giving you an answer.' Monsieur folded up his paper and placed it on the small table beside his armchair. 'I can't very well do that if I don't know the question though, can I?'

Harry shook his head in response to the question, and battled with himself for a long moment. There was nothing stopping him from just turning and running back to the safety of his bedroom, where he could forget all about this silly plan to come and bother Monsieur. On the other hand, Monsieur seemed to be genuinely interested in what Harry had to say. Making his mind up, he squared his shoulders and met Monsieur's eyes.

'Could you tell me about my parents?' he asked, his voice much quieter and shakier than he'd intended it to sound, and mentally braced himself for Monsieur to reject him in that gentle, polite manner he always had.

But the polite rejection never came. In fact, if Harry had spent several hours trying to guess every possible reaction, he'd have never been able to predict the beaming smile that grew on Monsieur's face.

'Of course I can, Harry. Come and sit down,' Monsieur said softly. Harry walked into the room slowly and sat on the sofa opposite Monsieur's armchair. 'I've been waiting for you to ask.'

'You have?' Harry asked timidly, and Monsieur nodded.

'I have. Why, if I were in your position, I'd want to know all I could about my parents.'

'Really?'

'Really. Now I have to admit that I didn't really know your parents personally. I did meet your mother once, not long after she left Hogwarts, but I only got the chance to have a brief conversation with her. It was during a function where many people were trying to offer her jobs, you see, so her attention was in high demand.' Monsieur paused and took a brief sip of his tea. His face took on a thoughtful expression, like he was trying to figure out what to say. 'By all accounts, your mother was a brilliant woman. It was practically public knowledge that she was sharp as a whip, and she could have walked into practically any job she wanted straight out of school. Your father was no slouch either, mind you, but everybody talked about how bright your mother was.'

Harry smiled slightly and dipped his head, but wrung his hands together as he considered his next question. It was one he was desperate to know the answer to, but Aunt Petunia had shouted at him so angrily when he'd asked her that now he was afraid to ask Monsieur. Plucking up that courage again, he sat up straight and looked up at Monsieur.

'What were their names?' he asked in a near whisper.

Monsieur froze for an instant, looking at Harry almost like he hadn't heard him, before looking down at the teacup in his hands with a frown. Immediately, Harry regretted asking and was about to apologise for obviously making his guardian angry, but before he could open his mouth, Monsieur looked up with a sad smile.

'Their names were James and Lily Potter,' he said quietly. 'You get your middle name from your father.'

Harry dropped his gaze to his lap and instantly started repeating the names over and over under his breath, trying them on his tongue and committing them to memory, as though if he didn't remember them now then he'd never find out again. When he looked up, the sad smile on Monsieur's face had grown even sadder. It was a look Harry suddenly recognised - he'd seen it on the teachers and other children at primary school when Dudley and his friends would pick on him. Pity. Harry flushed and started looking around the room, finding anything to look at except for that expression.

Monsieur cleared his throat, then, and carried on talking. 'The thing is, with your mother, everybody always spoke about how clever she was, how she excelled in all of her exams, and how she could get any job that she wanted, but what was often overlooked was how incredibly kind she was. I've told you before that I worked at St Mungo's, the magical hospital, when I lived in Britain, haven't I?'

Not lifting his gaze from his lap, where it had ended up, Harry nodded.

'Well, I remember one patient I had back in 1979. She'd broken her arm, and had come in to get it fixed up. Not a long procedure, but when I looked at her arm I could see that it had been broken before. As I got ready to reset this lady's arm, I asked how it had been broken before. She laughed a bit reluctantly and admitted that she'd slipped down the stairs when she was at Hogwarts and had fractured it. That surprised me, actually, because the healing wasn't up to the standard that the Hogwarts nurse, Poppy, usually worked at.

'When I mentioned that, she admitted that she hadn't gone to the hospital wing at Hogwarts because she was embarrassed - that's where she'd just come from, you see, for something unrelated, and didn't want to go straight back. This lady told me that the Head Girl had come across her just then, and after hearing about the girl's reluctance to see the nurse, had healed her arm there in the corridor. That was your mother: she knew magic like the back of her hand, but also never hesitated to use it to help others. I think that speaks a lot for someone's character.'

As Monsieur spoke, tears had made their way to Harry's eyes, and were traitorously threatening to fall onto his glasses. He sniffled as quietly as he could, not wanting to let Monsieur know that he was crying in case he stopped talking.

Out of the corner of his blurred vision, he noticed a box of tissues being placed onto the seat beside him. 'I'm sorry,' he murmured thickly.

'You don't need to apologise for crying, Harry,' Monsieur said, not unkindly, before continuing as though nothing had happened. 'I'm afraid I don't know nearly as much about your father. From what I have heard, though, he was something of a trouble-maker in Hogwarts. He had a small group of friends who were notorious for making mischief, and the entire school knew who they were. If you want to know more about his schooling days, then Dalia is the one to ask. She used to be a house elf in the castle when your parents went to school, so I can only imagine how often she dealt with the aftermath of your father's hobbies.'

A question popped into Harry's mind unbidden, and he looked up suddenly. 'Will I go to Hogwarts?'

Monsieur sat back in his armchair, looking thoughtful. 'I don't know, to be honest. I wouldn't want to deny you the opportunity to learn magic in the same place your parents did, but there's a lot going on in Britain still.'

At Harry's confused expression, Monsieur continued carefully.

'The thing you need to know, Harry, is that for many years almost every country in Europe was in a difficult battle with bad witches and wizards. I'm sure you know about the Second World War in the Muggle world?' Harry nodded. 'Well some of the problems that the world faced then also leaked into the magical world too. The details are much too complicated and upsetting to go through right now, but the result was that many countries dealt with their "bad wizard" problem differently. Some countries did very well at stopping the wars from getting out of hand, like France and Iberia -'

'Is that why you live here now?' Harry asked, his complete interest in Monsieur's story stopping him from realising that he had interrupted.

Monsieur smiled proudly. 'It certainly is. I chose France instead of Iberia - that's Spain and Portugal, by the way; the magical community acts as one big country down there - almost entirely because the weather wasn't as hot. I can't stand the heat,' he confided with a chuckle. 'Back to the point though: some countries, like Britain, really struggled to deal with the bad wizards and as such, some bad wizards are still out there now.'

It went without saying that Monsieur was talking about the people that attacked the Dursleys. Harry shuddered slightly, as he often did when he remembered that night, but Monsieur quickly got back to the point.

'So the question of whether or not you'll go to Hogwarts is a difficult one. It certainly might be the case that Britain finally sorts out their bad wizard problem, in which case it might be safe for you to go to Hogwarts. Otherwise, there's a very good magical school in France called Beauxbatons which you could go to, like several other very successful witches and wizards did. Either way, you won't be able to go until you're eleven, so it's something for us to consider closer to then.'

Harry thought about that and agreed, but his mind quickly moved on to another realisation he'd had.

'Did my parents die because of the bad wizards?' he asked quietly.

'They did,' Monsieur confirmed, before biting on his lip. 'Your parents weren't the only ones who died that way either. The bad wizards would go after whole families that they didn't like, killing them all. Your parents were very good people, and unfortunately that means that they made some of the bad wizards very angry.'

The grandfather clock started chiming then, signalling nine o'clock.

'I think that it's about time for bed now, though, don't you?' Monsieur asked kindly.

As if on cue, Harry let out a big yawn. 'Yes, Monsieur,' he replied dutifully, and climbed off of the sofa.

'And Harry?' Monsieur asked as Harry made his way out of the room. He turned to see Monsieur smiling gently at him. 'You are always welcome to ask me whatever you like, and if I can't give you an answer, then I'll at least do my best to explain why. Does that sound like a deal?'

Harry nodded, and as Monsieur beamed widely at him, he couldn't help but to smile shyly back.

Author's Notes: In Plain Sight is a story set in a universe similar, but not the same, as canon Harry Potter. Some changes to the history of the world, and the history of the characters will only be slightly different, while other elements will be entirely different. With that said, though the characters may be different, they will almost all still be completely recognisable as the characters that we all know and love (or hate) from Harry Potter canon. The primary pairing will be Harry/Hermione, though I'm not entirely how long it will be before they get together.

Truth be told, I haven't got many of the details of this story planned as of yet, so we're on this adventure together to see where this story goes.

A final point for any readers of my other story Three Hallows' Eve, it is most certainly not abandoned, I've just been stuck on the next chapter, and life has somewhat gotten in the way of figuring it out. I hope to be able to update it sooner rather than later.

I truly hope you enjoy the story! Please do leave a review letting me know what you think.

Take care, amidland.