Minerva tucked Harry into bed on his first night at Hogwarts with an enormous sense of pleasure and accomplishment. She hadn't been worried about taking him from those horrid Muggles - they wouldn't have stood a chance of stopping her even if they'd cared enough to try - but she'd secretly wondered whether she would be able to overcome Dumbledore's objections to letting the boy stay. It was all done now, though; Harry was safe in their care and would be given a proper wizard's upbringing.

She stood over his cot and watched as he drifted off to sleep, clutching a frayed old blanket that had been hers long ago. If she looked closely, she could still make out the fading runes her grandmother had embroidered in silver thread around its edges: symbols for health, for good luck, for protection. They had kept her safe all the years of her childhood; surely they could do the same for Harry, at least for one night.

I'll get him a new blanket tomorrow, she thought, beginning a mental list, and some decent robes in his size, and a pair of shoes. The poor child had arrived without a single possession to his name - everything he'd owned had gone along with his parents' house, and his aunt and uncle hadn't bothered to buy replacements. She had borrowed the little nightshirt he was wearing from the Hogwarts nurse, Madam Pomfrey, whose son and daughter had long since outgrown it.

Harry sighed and closed his eyes, and the two fingers he'd been sucking slipped out of his mouth. Carefully, Minerva reached down and dried them with a corner of the blanket. He looked so small and vulnerable that she was tempted to move him to her own bed so he wouldn't be alone, but remembering what Dumbledore had said, she settled for tucking the blanket more firmly around him before leaving the room.

Everything will be all right now, she thought as she paused in the doorway to snuff the lanterns with a wave of her wand.

But it wasn't - not at all. By the end of that week, she had discovered that Harry's recent experiences had left a mark on him far deeper than the angry red curse scar on his forehead. He wouldn't eat, or smile, or play with the toys she and the other professors had enchanted for him. Every night, he woke up screaming with what she could only assume were bad dreams, but when she tried to soothe him, he went rigid and turned away from her, wailing for "Mummy."

It was one of the few words he knew, and she got to hear him say it more often than she would have liked: he spent nearly all his waking time toddling around her quarters, which were their quarters now, repeating "Mummy, Mummy" and peering behind sofas and wall hangings as if he were looking for something. She had tried to divert him with pretty magic of the sort parents did for their children - colored bubbles and fluttering birds and the like - but nothing could stop the endless search. It broke her heart to see it.

"I don't understand it, Albus," she told Dumbledore one afternoon at the beginning of the second week. They were in his office again, going over next term's curriculum. "I'm doing all I can for him, but he still seems so unhappy."

"He wants his mother," Dumbledore said. "Give him time, Minerva. Even a child that young needs a while to adjust to such a change in his life."

"I know," she said. She was trying very hard to be patient, but it was difficult when she received so little from Harry in return. Half the time she felt as if he were ignoring her, the other half as if he actually hated her. The previous night, she had lifted him out of his cot while he was sleeping, thinking that this was her chance to cuddle him a bit, but he had woken immediately and howled to be let go, arching and flailing till she had to put him down or risk dropping him. Once he was back in the cot, she had cast a Silencing Spell on him to stifle the noise, gotten into her own bed, drawn the curtains and sobbed in anger and frustration.

Raising a small child had seemed so simple when she had first come up with the plan. She had thought all Harry needed to thrive was food and warmth and security, but it seemed she had been wrong. If only he were the age of her students! She knew how to handle them perfectly well: firm discipline and high expectations, with the occasional tidbit of praise. All tactics that were unlikely to work on a traumatized sixteen-month-old baby.

Albus could help her sort things out, she was sure - he had had children of his own, long ago, and was a grandfather several times over. But she kept going back to what he had said to her the night she had brought Harry to Hogwarts: I reserve the right to change my mind if circumstances change. If he got the idea she was losing control of the situation, he might very well decide to send Harry away again, and she would not stand for that.

Well, if she wanted to convince him that everything was all right, she could hardly let her work slip. Picking up her quill again, she struck out "porcupines to pincushions" on the list in front of her and wrote in "Vanishing Spells" instead; the fifth years would need to know those for their O.W.L.s.

"Where is Harry now, by the by?" Dumbledore asked, glancing at her.

"I asked one of the house-elves to take him out walking in the herb garden," said Minerva. "He sleeps better at night if he gets a bit of fresh air during the day." Better meant that he slept four hours in a row instead of two, but again, no need to mention that to Albus. "Why do you ask?"

" I would like to borrow him for a while after we've finished," said Dumbledore. "I have been meaning to take him up into the Divination tower and ask Sybill Trelawney to have a look at him."

"Sybill!" Minerva sniffed. "The house-elf could tell you more about his future than she could."

"Do not be too sure," said Dumbledore gravely.

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A/N - Yes, I know things aren't going too smoothly for the three of them - especially for Minerva - but they'll get better, I promise!