AN1: That summary above is somewhat incomplete. We're also going to explore on the inner workings of magic, change a few details to try and weave something original from canon, and continuously stray further from the path of canon. Thought you ought to know.

AN2: Dumbledore and Harry's new guardian are going to lead us through the introduction. After halfway through Ch. 2, we'll follow Harry most of the time.

AN2: Just to get this out of the way in advance: Harry's guardian is not a reliable narrator when it comes to Albus Dumbledore, who is actually my favourite character in the series.

AN3: English is not my mother tongue. There's somewhat, err, creative grammar ahead, hopefully not too much.

Relentless

Prologue

The Wand Changes the Wizard

Halloween 1981, Editorial Office of the Daily Prophet

It all began on Halloween 1981, after the death of two people, with a small beetle circling an enormous desk.

At this desk sat a heavily overweight man.

A yellowish note flew around his hand and nudged him gently, but he chased it away. That could be taken care of later.

"Well?"

In a split second the beetle became a slim, blond woman with a false, shark-like smile on her lips and an extremely intense, almost manic glow in the eyes.

"It's true. Dead, both of them. I saw the house, unsightly view – a shame, of course." She sighed, perhaps a little too dramatically, and slowly began to run her finger over the corrugated tabletop. "Harry though ... Harry is alive. And You-Know-Who seems gone."

"Just like that."

"Yes, but let's put him aside for a second. Because now", Rita Kimmkorn cleared her throat, then smiled again, and this time the smile was real, although it was a little too broad to actually look friendly. "Now it's getting spicy."

Cuffe raised his eyebrows when she stopped talking.

"Would you please save the tension breaks for the more patient of your colleagues?" He finally asked.

"The little boy was taken away just a few minutes after I got there - by Rubeus Hagrid!"

Cuffe slapped the desk with his fist, and two of the floating notes hurried away. "Dumbledore's biggest lapdog. I knew it!"

He put his meaty hands on Rita's. Then, he looked deep into her eyes.

"Taken - where?"

February 1983, Little Whinging

"Yes?"

Barnabas Cuffe was faced with a man who was at least as corpulent as himself - a fact that made him a lot more likeable in his mind. The man had a strikingly small neck, and an astounding amount of facial colour. He, in turn, didn't look too pleased to see him.

"I'm not buying anything," added the man, and was about to close the door, but Cuffe interrupted him with a smile.

"Oh, that won't be necessary. In fact, it's me that would rather like to pick something up. "

The man in front of him, he thought, seemed to be about as flexible mentally as he was physically. He – Vernon Dursley, judging by the doorbell - stood there for at least two seconds and didn't seem to know what to do now. Finally, he settled on an answer. "I didn't hire anyone to pick anything up."

"No, you didn't - but I think that we shouldn't discuss this at the door step," Cuffe said, pointing to the inside of the house with a not too subtle gesture.

Dursley seemed to think for a moment, then looked at Cuffe's suit, and sighed. "Come in."

The first thing he noticed was the pictures. The boy on them might be four years old, maybe five, because otherwise he would hardly have had the time to reach his impressive width. Cuffe made a face. Maybe he wasn't the one to judge obesity, but still, that seemed a little extreme. Hopefully it wasn't ...

"Your nephew?" He asked, pointing to one of the pictures.

Maybe he should have kept his mouth shut. Dursley's behavior immediately changed. The red face seemed to light up from inside and his tiny pig's eyes got an extremely ugly sparkle.

"Who are you and what do you want ?!" Dursley hissed and raised his chin towards him - which, given the fact that Cuffe was a few inches taller than him, wasn't quite as impressive as he'd probably intended.

"Relax," he replied, still smiling. "I want to make you an offer concerning your nephew."

There was silence, presumably because Vernon Dursley's extremely tardy thoughts were busy traveling through his brain. "You are one of them, aren't you!"

Oh dear. What kind of family was that?

"Get out of my house!" Dursley added, wildly flailing his arms. Cuffe, on the other hand, felt an evil smile spreading across his face. His way of dealing with situations like this was usually to do the opposite of what was expected.

With a relieved sigh, he planted himself on the couch. "What a cozy sofa, Mr. Dursley," he said. Dursley's mouth opened and closed.

"Please - don't try to come up with a response, we don't have all year," Cuffe continued, his eyes dancing with mischief. "Just tell me if you would be willing to make a deal, concerning Harry."

"A deal," said Vernon Dursley, completely frozen. Cuffe nodded affirmatively.

A short break. "Concerning the boy."

Wonderful, the last part of the sentence had arrived.

"Quite right. I would like to take him with me. "

Again, there was an amazing change within Vernon Dursley. His eyes suddenly started to gleam and the corners of his mouth twitched as if they wanted to smile but didn't quite know how.

"Permanently?"

Cuffe frowned. He had actually expected this to be the phrase that would cause the most uproar. But it seemed like Harry Potter wasn't particularly popular here – not even welcome, in fact. How very convenient. That way, he didn't even need to feel guilty about this.

"Permanently, indeed."

The glow suddenly disappeared from Dursley's eyes, and his pose shifted back to suspicious. "You're not one of those that want to kill the boy, are you?"

"I wouldn't even be able to enter if I were." At least he assumed so, everything else would be pretty stupid, even for Dumbledore. On a different note, if Dursley seriously thought he'd sufficiently cared for Harry's security with that question, Barnabas Cuffe had grossly overestimated his intelligence.

"PETUNIA! BOYS! GET DOWN HERE!"

When Cuffe walked out, he had suddenly become the guardian of a little boy. As he left Privet Drive, Mrs. Figg was standing on the street, eyes glazed over, a single sentence echoing in her mind. The one certainty she'd tell Albus for years to come:

The boy is fine.

A few hours later, Whizfield Park

"Minus?" Asked the little boy with the lightning bolt scar and looked at him with big, green and disappointingly uncomprehending eyes.

"Arminius Cuffe," said Barnabas Cuffe, rolling his eyes. "But only outside these four walls." Maybe he should have chosen a first name with fewer syllables. But there was no way he could let Harry keep his actual name – he wasn't that irresponsible. If a former Death Eater found out where Harry Potter was hiding, he might be in mortal danger. But as long as he didn't take his son out in the public too often ... hopefully, no one would notice.

"Your name is Arminius Cuffe from now on," he repeated. "And we'll adjust your hair color a little." Unfortunately, there weren't any spells that permanently changed the appearance of a wizard and looked credible.

"And your hair length," he added with a sideways glance at the lightning bolt shaped scar that was clearly visible on the child's head.

"I ... where's Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia?"

"They weren't nice to you, were they?"

The boy looked uncertain. "Kind of?" He finally answered.

"That's why I picked you up. I want you to be well. "

Harry Potter stood in his new home, eyes wide, and a slight smile spread across his face.

The Daily Prophet

Miscellaneous

We congratulate our editor-in-chief Barnabas Cuffe on his newly adopted son, Arminius Cuffe (née Loush). Maybe, one day, the next editor-in-chief?

Below was the picture of a smiling blond boy who was busy wiping his hair out of his eyes.

August 1984, Diagon Alley

The old wandmaker's wrinkled face stared at him in amazement. "I'm selling wands to eleven-year-olds," he said slowly.

Cuffe nodded happily. Ollivander blinked. "He's not eleven."

Harry – or Arminius Cuffe, as he was called for the duration of this trip - held up all the fingers of his right hand. "I'm already four!" He replied proudly.

Ollivander's eyes grew a little more confused. "Are you serious?"

"I assure you, I'm a thoroughly serious person. "

Ollivander slowly shook his head. "A wand," he said then, "is not any arbitrary magical object. It is probably the most extraordinary magical artifact any wizard has access to in his life – daily access, in fact. Each wand has its own note, its own character. And it will chose the wizard that is most suited to its individual traits. A child like yours, a four year-old, is, excuse me, little more than a blank slate. Come back to me in a few years, and I'm certain that a fine wand will choose him. Today, however, I'm afraid they won't be able to even respond."

"Can't hurt to try then, I guess."

There was a clear challenge in Cuffe's voice that the old wandmaker didn't fail to pick up on. He shrugged, randomly opened one of the boxes, took out one of his creations and gave it to Harry. It looked comically large in his tiny hand.

"Oak and dragon heartstring, 12 inches, nice and supple. Do wield it, Mr. Cuffe."

Harry wove his wand around. A flame broke out of its tip and almost scorched away Ollivander's eyebrows.

The old wand maker stared at him, utterly paralyzed.

"That was not supposed to happen." He whispered. "I'm not - there must be something wrong with - "

"Correct me if I'm wrong – you're the highly regarded wandmaker, after all – however, as I see it, your fancy theory doesn't quite hold up to reality, does it?" Cuffe asked mildly. "So, can he now get his wand?"

"No! Mr. Cuffe, you don't understand – whatever caused this fluke, it doesn't prove that he's ready for a wand. As I said, these aren't mere magical sticks. In a way, they have their own minds, their own personality. These personalities tend to be influenced by the ones that wield them. If, though, a child as young as yours gets a wand, there is the possibility – no, almost certainty – that this delicate balance is turned around, that the child starts to adapt to the wand."

Fortunately, dramatic speeches didn't ever have much impact on Barnabas Cuffe. "So?"

Ollivander looked at him earnestly, deep wrinkles etched into his forehead. "You will find that forcing people to think like a magical item is a very unfortunate idea." His voice was rough now, laced with almost panicked worry. "The results are completely unpredictable."

"All I'm hearing is that my son will have quite a harmonic relationship with his wand. How's that a bad thing, again?"

"I'm sorry," the old wandmaker replied, eyes narrowed. "I can't stand for this."

"So you think there's no wand maker in the world ready to do that little favour for me? That you could actually prevent my son from getting what he needs?"

"I'm not of the opinion that one can justify any wrongdoing by pointing fingers at others."

Cuffe shook his head and tsk-ed. "Did I mention that I am the editor-in-chief of the Daily Prophet? How about an article concerning your unwillingness to serve customers based on nothing but absurd theories you made up on the spot? Which you had to, because the absurd theories you had before were swiftly disproven?"

The old man didn't move. Cuffe remained silent and let him think. He wasn't sure if -

"Do you think," said Ollivander in a trembling voice, "do you really think you can blackmail me into selling a wand? Every single piece in here is my work, and I sell them when I think their sale to be wise - mostly to children with a few books and a shiny new copper cauldron. I'm certainly not selling anything to a man who apparently has no qualms about exposing his own son to risks none of us can even begin to estimate. "

"The boy will get his wand." Cuffe replied, shrugging. "And whether you choose to continue to celebrate your eccentricity or to make a sensible business decision – that only influences the quality of the piece of wood my son's personality is supposed to adapt to. If you can burden your conscience with the knowledge that he had to adapt to a second-class piece of wood due to your actions – that's your choice, of course. "

And just like that, he had him. Like everyone else, Ollivander had his weak points - you just had to say the right sentence at the right time, as if by chance. Admittedly, the careful application of Legilimency did help that chance immensely.

Ollivander frowned and put his thumbs together. Then he scratched his head. "You are a disgusting person," he said, pressing his lips together. Cuffe smiled at him, eyes flashing.

Then, the old man leaned down to Harry. "Please give me your wand arm, Arminius."

January 1986, Whizfield Park

"Wingardium Leviosa!" Harry yelled. Cuffe didn't know how many times he'd already tried it. Since he'd taught him to read, he'd been almost obsessive about trying the spells he found in his books. None of them had been successful. The boy looked up, searching for help, but Cuffe just shrugged. The only advice he could provide on that spell was "swish and flick", and he doubted that Harry would find that more useful than he had, back then.

"Wingardium Leviosa!" Nothing, again.

Cuffe licked his lips. Yes, the boy was only four, but this was a simple spell, wasn't it? The defeater of Lord Voldemort should be able to get that one right in a far more reasonable time frame.

"Wingardium Leviosa!"

He had hoped to raise a powerful wizard, a second Dumbledore, if he was lucky - but it seemed like there was some talent missing here. Maybe, he should give the boy back to the Dursleys. Maybe he was just wasting his time.

Harry frowned and looked at his wand. There was a strange glint in his eyes, a hungry expression that was somehow lacking humanity.

The feather trembled slightly, Cuffe turned his head to Harry and involuntarily tensed. If the boy took his wand now, maybe ...

"Wingardium Leviosa!"

The feather hovered in the air majestically, and Harry's face glowed with pride.

"Excellent! I think it's time to get somebody to teach you," said Barnabas Cuffe, ruffling through Harry's messy blonde hair.

December 1986, Whizfield Park

There were tears in Harry's eyes, but he didn't say anything. And then he hugged him (or tried to, because his arms were too short to do more than putting his hands on Cuffe's considerable belly). Barnaba's Cuffe stopped in surprise.

Most of the time Harry was in his room, experimenting with the wand he'd gotten a year ago - or reading a book about magic. There wasn't much more for him to do, Cuffe had made sure of that. Fortunately, Harry was more of a calm child - and almost frighteningly ambitious when it came to learning new things.

However, affection wasn't one of his usual traits.

"I dreamt of a green light," he said then. "The night I came here, right?"

Apparently he had been too young to still remember the Dursleys – that, and they had been too boring to leave any impression on his mind. Cuffe nodded. He didn't exactly fancy explaining that little stunt of himself, at least not right now.

The boy looked up at him and, like several times before, he felt that Harry wanted to tell him something but didn't dare to.

Fortunately, all he had to do was look into the boy's eyes in order to know what it was.

At the forefront of Harry's mind was a very blurry picture of a large man who saved him from the ruins of a house. It was accompanied by a certain warmth, and based on what he'd just said, it could only refer to him. Did Harry really think that he'd been the one that had got him out of Godric's Hollow? Well, he'd take any base for loyalty he could get.

Even though it wasn't exactly flattering to be confused with the silhouette of Rubeus Hagrid. Maybe he did need to lose a bit of weight.

February 1988, Whizfield Park

"Occlumency?"

"That's a technique of hiding things that you'd like keep secret." And not recommended for children below the age of 15, but he wasn't exactly one to be scared away by petty pedagogical advice.

"What do we have to keep secret?"

"Your name."

"Why?"

Barnabas Cuffe rubbed his temples. Perhaps it was time to tell Harry the story of his parent's demise. And the Dark Lord.

So he did.

"And he's … he's dead, just like that?" Harry asked after he'd barely finished his story. He didn't look hurt, merely … intrigued. Maybe because the tale didn't hold any emotional weight for him – after all, he'd never gotten to know his parents. At least, that was what Cuffe told himself in order to shut up the hoarse voice of Ollivander whispering in the back of his head.

"I'm not sure." Cuffe replied. Well – actually, he was, as not-dead Dark Lords tended to cause quite a lot of mayhem, and this one hadn't done so since that particular Halloween. But telling the truth wouldn't help at this moment. Aspiring great wizards needed a goal to feed their ambition and Harry would now get his. The day he'd realize he'd lied to him would be uncomfortable, but that was far away right now. "Some say he did. He disappeared, that's for sure. But I'd wager he's still somewhere out there, weakened, but alive. Sooner or later, he will regain his strength. And as soon as that day comes", he continued, looking at Harry with what he hoped was an intense gaze, "His first goal will be to get revenge at the one that brought him down. He'll try to get you. "

"He was a powerful wizard, wasn't he?" There was a strange glint in Harry's eyes, far too similar to the one they'd had when he'd performed his first spell. It made Cuffe shiver.

Still, he nodded. "There was only one as powerful as him, and that just happened to be the very least anyone should rely on. That's why I'm trying to get you to grow up as fast as possible, why I hired Mr. Quirrell to teach you. I ... I want to be sure that you have an actual chance. "

It was almost a shame that Voldemort was actually dead. For a moment, he had nearly believed it himself.

"What do you hate so much about Dumbledore? He was the one that could've stopped him, right?"

They hadn't spoken much about Dumbledore so far, Cuffe had made sure of that. But it seemed as if this day of revelations wasn't quite finished.

This next part would be unpleasant, but at least he'd be telling the truth this time.

Cuffe closed his eyes. "About fifty years ago there was another Dark Lord, Gellert Grindelwald. He raged mainly on the continent, but there he was a force of nature. Back then, Dumbledore was already the greatest - no, great is the wrong word, there is no greatness in a coward. But he was the most powerful wizard and people begged him - again and again - to finally step in the fight against Grindelwald. He refused. I have no idea what kept him from acting, but he was perfectly happy to let others fight and die, year after year after year, just so he didn't have to lift a finger. Only when the pressure finally became too great to ignore – when we'd probably lynched him if he'd turned his back for a few more days, when his oh-so-precious reputation was at stake – only then did he face him."

There was steel in Cuffe's voice now; his double chin twichting slightly. "Had he stepped in just a few weeks earlier, many people - including, by the way, most of my family members - would have survived, but the great and mighty Albus Dumbledore just. Couldn't. Be. Arsed. And for resting on the couch for years, he then got an Order of Merlin, First Class, shoved up his ass."

He looked around for Harry, who had taken a few steps backwards.

"He never paid for that, never, but he will. Believe me, Harry, he will."

November 1988, Bramsbury Cottage

"Hi, Arminius, I'm Blaise Zabini!" The boy with the dark complexion and short black hair said to Harry, not caring about the two adults next to them. "Do you like crocodiles? My mother has a whole collection down in the basement! "

Meanwhile, Adrasteia Zabini looked at the editor-in-chief with batted eyelashes. "I always find it extremely ... impressive when a single man adopts a child," she said in a strange tone of voice that had a pleasant shiver travel down Cuffe's spine. That lady understood her craft.

"I wrote several articles about the destiny of your last few husbands." Cuffe replied. "While doing that, your surprisingly effective attempts at seduction unfortunately lost a bit of appeal."

Mrs. Zabini laughed brightly. "Your insults were much more subtle back then," she smiled. "Don't tell me you've become rusty. Anyway, could you enlighten me as to why you're here? I can't seem to remember us two being more than … business acquaintances."

Not quite, no. But there weren't many people he knew well. He was the sole survivor of his family, and no woman had wanted to endure him longer than absolutely necessary. Most of the people he spoke to felt insulted just after a few seconds. He knew he could have lead a different life, but ... well, it was way too much fun to revel in people's reactions to his sharp tongue. Adastreia Zabini was one of the few who could handle it.

She still wasn't a good choice for a wife, for obvious reasons.

"That was … okay," Harry said as they left.

Barnabas Cuffe put a mental "check" behind "socializing" (and behind his queasiness concerning Harry's development). Now they could go back to focus even more intensely on making a great wizard out of him.

April 1990, Whizfield Park

It was 2 AM and Barnabas Cuffe was reasonably certain that he had told Harry to go to sleep at least four times.

"I've got to read," Harry had only replied, his eyes' red rims almost glowing. "When I'm done with this, I'll sleep, promise."

"Don't you think it's quite enough?" He asked, sighing. Harry had made incredible advances in magic, but along the way, he'd somehow lost the ability to stop. A small voice in the back of Cuffe's head, which, even after all these years, still sounded suspiciously like Ollivander's, continued to persuade him that this couldn't be called normal anymore.

"I need to get better than the Other One," Harry said without even looking up. He'd begun to call You-Know-Who that a few months ago, for whatever reason. The boy said that it felt right to call him that, and, well, it wasn't quite as pathetic as "You-Know-Who". Which Cuffe couldn't help but agree with.

"Any particular reason you've got to do this now?"

Automatically, Harry's hand moved towards the shiny, flat surface of his wand. "I have to," he whispered.

("You will find that forcing people to think like a magical item is a very unfortunate idea.")

Maybe, just maybe, the wandmaker had indeed been right. Cuffe looked at the blond boy in front of him – who would soon reacquire his black hair, on his eleventh birthday, to be precise - and scratched his chin thoughtfully. Then he shrugged; no use shutting the barn door after the horse had bolted. Every great wizard was eccentric in one way or another, they all probably started to lose their minds in childhood.

If only he tried a bit more, he might still manage to convince himself of that.

July 1991, Hogwarts

Harry James Potter
(The small bedroom obstructed by an enchanted cactus)
Vertic Alley 7
Whizfield Park
London

Minerva McGonagall only spared the letter a peripheral glance when she swung her wand so that it tied itself to an owl. At the last possible moment, just before the owl could fly away, her eyes widened. That was not the place where she had spent a day as a cat ten years ago.

"Where?" She murmured to herself. Then, for the first time, she read the line concerning the cactus. That – that was a problem. A big one.

"Simply glorious, Albus," she hissed and headed for the headmaster's office. Her footsteps echoed a little louder than usual, but usually she didn't think it necessary to hit the floor quite as forcefully.

AN: So ... yeah, please tell me what you think!