Kidnapped!

Tongue firmly held between his front teeth, Harry Potter worked on his rune etching. Being home schooled by his godfather and honorary uncle was pretty okay. His private school was pretty good but just normal. He liked the magic thing – well, much better than he thought he would the first time he learned magic was real. And learning it alongside normal… err that would be muggle… stuff was working out pretty well. He honestly never dreamed he'd enjoy magic, especially after the first time he was exposed to it.

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It was a dark and stormy night. Trite as that might sound, it was the truth. Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon – his guardians at the time – had dragged him and his whale of a cousin all around Britain all because these mysterious letters kept appearing wherever they stayed. (If it hadn't been so weird, Harry would've actually enjoyed that impromptu vacation, seeings as he'd never been on vacation before.) The final night of their bizarre flight, they were sojourning in a rustic cabin on an island. They'd taken a boat to get there and everything. No letters showed up. But in the middle of the night, someone started pounding on the door.

Then that someone knocked in the door – with his bare hands. And it was a plenty solid door, at that.

Well, Uncle Vernon wasn't having any of that. He lifted his shot gun (all those years belonging to the shooting club were finally paying off) and blasted the huge guy in the chest. The guy stopped, bent for a moment breathing heavily, then stood up.

"That hurt uh bit, Dursley, ya great prune." Then, the gargantuan man grabbed Uncle Vernon's gun, bent it in half, and threw it at Uncle Vernon, knocking him to the floor. He didn't move. Aunt Petunia and Dudley hid behind various bits of furniture at that moment. Harry just stood, shocked, wondering what the giant man wanted.

Then the giant man turned and looked straight at Harry.

"Well, Harry Potter. I t'aint seen ye since ye were a wee tyke. Hagrid's me name. Twas gonna wait til first light to take ye to Diagon, but what with this bit of a bother, mebbe now would be a better time to go, yeah?"

Harry got the gist of this. Some lunatic who dwarfed his uncle's six foot frame and looked to be about 30 stone was taking Harry somewhere. What choice did he have? He didn't like his relatives much, but Uncle Vernon had shot the man, and it hadn't even left a dent.

Besides, his relatives were the worst sort of people and would likely be ecstatic if Harry were to go along with this kidnapper.

So he did.

He rode in silence as the giant mumbled about this and that. He followed along slightly – apparently magic was real (and didn't that explain a lot of things?) and Harry was a wizard. They were going to enroll Harry at a magic school and buy supplies for that school. When they got to a bank (run by goblins of all things), Harry was just about done being shocked. Harry'd spent most of his life on his toes – whether it was his hooligan cousin's gang trying to thrash him, his aunt trying to hit him with the heaviest cooking utensil she could heft, or simply his teachers trying to get him to demonstrate he was smarter than his cousin (which would earn him a beating at home), he had spent most of his waking minutes reacting. His survival had depended on it.

In Gringotts Bank, Harry's reactionary brain took over.

Banks kept money. Banks had guards. These guards looked meaner than the giant guy. Surely, magical guards would be able to handle this monster man.

When they got to the teller, Harry waited for his chance.

"And does Mr. Potter have his key?" the teller asked.

"Dumbledore gave it to me… the li'l bugger's here somewhere…" As his kidnapper was distracted, Harry pulled away. Getting a few people between him and the giant, he got the attention of one of the guards.

He looked straight at the goblin, and whispered (though he was trying to scream), "Help me, please! I've been kidnapped!"

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Well, that was all it had taken. The goblin guards, already suspicious that an heir didn't have his own key, surrounded Hagrid. They called the aurors in, as the purported kidnapping had occurred outside the bank. When Albus Dumbledore, he of all the titles and names, tried to get everything swept under the rug as a giant (no pun intended) misunderstanding, the healers who had started analyzing Harry's health stepped in. In the memory of the incident provided by Hary, he was obviously kidnapped by Rubeus Harid.

When Dumbledore clamed guardianship of the child, the healers had someone to blame for the abuse they found. When word of the abuse of The Boy Who Lived leaked, Vernon and Petunia Dursley were arrested just to pacify the public. But it wasn't enough to calm the horde.

How did their hero end up as an abused house-elf to magic-hating muggles? The fallout was massive. Dumbledore, though he did no time in Azkaban, was stripped of his various positions, including (especially) that of headmaster. McGonagall, the deputy headmistress, was also summarily dismissed when her role in the kidnapping (really? They left a 15 month child on a doorstep in the night in November?) was revealed.

Things might've been worse for Reubeus Hagrid had he not confessed right off (and admitted to knocking Dursley senseless, which actually won him some points). As it was, he was limited contact with children, so had to find work away from Hogwarts.

But what of Voldemort and the Death Eaters (and doesn't that sound like a bad band name)? Because of the "misunderstanding", Hagrid was taken by the aurors and didn't get a chance to fulfill his other mission: emptying vault 713 of its precious treasure (Nicholas Flamel's philosopher's stone). Because the vault was still full, its security was still at maximum. The goblins, alerted to an attempted breakin on vault 713, contained Quirinus Quirrell, note his parasitic passanger, and drain the magic of both, shunting this to further enhance the wards of Gringotts.

Poor Tommy Riddle. Cursing his dimwitted host, he could feel his own magic under attack. Attempting to save himself, he drained whatever magic he could reach – including all the horcruxes that weren't contained by protective magic (that would be Lily's charm only). Normally, the wards of Hogwarts would have been enough to protect the diadem, but Dimbledore (in his not so infinite wisdom) had weakened those wards several times (something about allowing a death eater or two on staff), allowing even that horcrux to be drained. When this magic wasn't enough to stand in the face of the Goblin Horde, Tom reached out and pulled magic from his only other hope – his death eaters.

Every marked death eater was squibbed that day. Those that were weak or infirm in any way (read: those in Azkaban) died that day.

(You don't even want to know how far away the scream could be heard when Molly Weasley discovered a dirty squib in her son Ron's bed.)

This was, incidentally, what kept the death eaters from trying to take Harry during his brief guardian-less time. It's also what spurred the actual trial of Sirius Black, since that man was unaffected by the mass squibbing.

As Harry was healed of years of abuse (and his curse scar de-cursed by competent healers), he wondered what his fate would be. When he met his godfather for the first time, he was, understandably, skeptical. But Sirius, with the balancing presence of Remus, had turned out to be a great guardian: firm when he needed to be but understanding overall.

With Dumbledore and McGonagall gone, Hogwarts was in a perpetual state of flux and the remaining Marauders decided that Harry would do better away from those hallowed halls. Harry agreed. He didn't want to be Freak or Boy or even The Boy Who Lived. He just wanted to be Harry.

And that's just what he was.

A/N So this one came pretty quickly. I've always thought Harry should've been scared of Hagrid. Why wasn't he? This guy breaks down the door, bends a shotgun (in the movie anyhow – don't remember if that's in the book)… And what would have happened if he said No, Thank You here? That's another story…