(A/N: OK. This is the chapter that prompted the ratings boost. Nothing terrible happens, but it is a little scary... never mind, just read it.)
Chapter 8: Adoption
"Uncle Harry, am I adopted?"
"What?"
"Am I adopted? Did you and Aunt Ginny adopt me? And can I please come live here with you and be a Potter and call you Dad and Mum, please, pretty please?"
Uncle Harry looked pretty surprised. Helen tried hard not to giggle.
"Those are some good questions, Helen," he said slowly. "Why don't we talk about that, you and me. What do you know about being adopted?"
Helen told him all about the book at school, and how the kids in the book went to live with families who wanted them and got to call their new parents Mum and Dad and use their new family's last name.
"And I thought of something else. My dad and mum – the ones I have now..." Helen hesitated.
Uncle Harry seemed to understand. "You can call them your father and your mother, Helen. That's polite, and it will help us keep things straight."
"Okay. My father and my mother... they... I don't think they like me. They like Chester a whole lot, but not me. Am I..." She sniffled. It was kind of hard to ask. "Am I that bad?"
"No," Uncle Harry said very fiercely, and then Helen was being hugged, and she found out she was crying. "No, Helen, you are not bad. Not at all. Your father and mother are the bad ones, for not loving you the way you deserve to be loved."
Helen gulped. "Do you love me, then?"
"More than anything," was the answer, and that set off a fresh wave of tears. Uncle Harry carried her out of his study and into the kitchen and sat down at the table.
"Ginny," he announced, "we're adopting Helen. From this day forward, she is Helen Potter, and I am her dad, and you are her mum."
Aunt Ginny was kneading bread dough. She turned around, dusting her hands off, and smiled at Helen. "I was wondering when we'd get around to it."
She came over and sat in a chair next to Harry and Helen. "It will have to be a secret for a while, sweetheart. You'll still live with the Dursleys, and everybody else will still call you Helen Dursley. But you will know that your real name is Helen Potter, and we're your real dad and mum, and someday you will come to live here."
Helen sniffled and smiled. "Does that make Ruby my really-and-truly twin?"
"Yes. Ruby is your really-and-truly twin now," said her mum, while her dad stroked her hair.
Helen considered this. "Uncle Fred was right, then," she said finally, and her mum and dad laughed.
They never did tell her why.
-----
And I never called the Dursleys "Mum" or "Dad" again. It would have been rude to my real parents.
Though I did throw a tantrum when I found out I'd have to be eleven before I could leave. But then Mum and Dad told me Mrs. Figg could be my friend, and she would take me to their house any time I liked... thank goodness for her. At first I only liked her because of where she could take me, but in the past few years I've started liking her for herself...
The car stopped. Helen gave a little shiver, pulling herself out of her memories.
"Here we are, girl." Her father smiled broadly and waved her out of the car. She got out, pulled her duffel out of the back seat, and got a good look at her new home.
The first thing she thought of was Hogwarts; the second thing, a prison.
It looked oddly like a combination of the two. It was huge and rambling and built of stone, but there were no towers here, and no grounds with inviting green grass and a lake and a Forbidden Forest. No, this place was fenced in, with blacktop all around it and only the occasional weed furtively trying to grow in a crack. This made the name emblazoned above the door seem rather ridiculous.
Goldenrod Academy. Why Goldenrod, I wonder?
Her father led the way up the front stairs, telling the man standing beside the door his name and hers, and that she was a new student, and he punched a code into a keypad and let them in. Helen noticed a security camera mounted above the door, and she had a shivery feeling that the man was a guard.
What kind of boarding school has guards at the doors?
The joke in her letter to her dad about a school for incurably criminal girls was feeling less funny all the time. Helen clutched her duffel close, feeling the familiar shape of Griffy in the top of it and her secret bag at the bottom. Her father kept checking the letter in his hand.
"Main hallway to the stairs, up one flight, third door on the left," he mumbled. Helen followed him up the stairs, stealing a glance at her wristwatch, a gift from Sirius two birthdays ago. The Dursleys had never even noticed that she had it.
It was about 11:45. She remembered launching Hedwig around 10:00 and leaving the house with her father just after 11. So this place, Goldenrod Academy, couldn't be more than a half-hour away from her house. She realized, too late, that she should have paid attention to how to get there.
It doesn't matter. I'm here now anyway. And they will find me. They will. They have to.
She was so lost in thought that she bumped into her father when he stopped abruptly. "Watch where you're going," he growled before knocking on the door marked Headmaster.
It was flung open so abruptly that Helen took an involuntary step back. "Ah, welcome, welcome," said the man standing in the doorway. "Mr. Dursley, is that correct? And your little girl Helen. How are you."
He went on without giving her a chance to answer, which was just as well, since Helen knew she was unlikely to be able to say anything polite at the moment. "The tuition is all in order, Mr. Dursley, everything's finished. I just need your signature on a few things, if you would care to step in..."
Helen sat numbly on the edge of a chair and listened to her father arranging her life for the next year. She was to have as few privileges as possible, they were authorized to use any and all reasonable punishments if she misbehaved... The word "visitors" caught her attention.
"Is this correct, Mr. Dursley? Your wishes are that no one comes to see Helen, not even you or your family?"
"My family has been mixed up with some... strange characters over the years, Mr. Lutch. People expert in, shall we say, unusual activities. Quite possibly criminals. It would be entirely possible for one of them to counterfeit my face, even my voice, so well that you couldn't tell the difference between me and him if we were standing in front of you together. They also have a rather nasty habit of stealing eleven-year-old children. I intend to keep Helen from being stolen. At all costs."
"A worthy sentiment, Mr. Dursley. And thank you so much for choosing the fine institution of Goldenrod as a place in which to keep your lovely daughter safe."
They shook hands. Her father turned to her.
"See you in a year," he said. She nodded.
No, she said in her mind. I will never see you again.
And I never want to.
Dudley Dursley walked out of the office, and, Helen hoped fervently, out of her life.
The headmaster cleared his throat. Helen started and looked at him.
"Helen Dursley," he said, shuffling through a stack of papers on his desk. "Quite a life you've had, or so your father tells me."
You ain't seen nothing yet, Helen's irreverent side volunteered.
"But everything will be different, now." He smiled. It was not friendly, warm, or anything a smile should be. "Welcome to Goldenrod Academy, where the rod – " He gestured toward the corner of the room. "– is indeed golden."
Helen looked and swallowed hard. There were sticks piled in the corner. Sticks that could only have one purpose.
One thing even the Dursleys had never done was hit her.
Oh no. Dad, Mum, everyone, please, find me soon!
In the distance, church bells chimed twelve o'clock.