a/n: Argh. I be back
CHAPTER 11: THE MISSING CHILD
Dumbledore grimly made his way to the one person he could count on being locked up in the dungeons on a sweet sunny day. Coming to a halt in front of Snape's office, he gave a perfunctory knock to the door and let himself in. Ah, the privileges of headmastership.
In sharp contrast to the dreary corridors of the dungeon, the potion master's office was well lit and equally well ventilated, if the cool draft that blew through the room, never mind they were underground, was anything to go by. Snape didn't deign to grace the headmaster with a greeting, his eyes fixed on a silvery liquid he was cooking up in a cauldron. Dumbledore sighed. The matter was urgent and time was a-wasting, but he wouldn't do anyone any favours if they both blew up in a potions mishap. Well, maybe except Voldemort.
A few minutes passed in silence as the Potions master fiddled with his cauldron and finally, setting it to stew on a slow flame, he turned to face the uncharacteristically grim headmaster. The old man almost seemed to need to steady himself before he said "The blood wards have fallen."
Snape started in surprise. Now, this was an unforeseen development. He thought for a long moment, mentally running through his meetings with his ex death eater (ostensibly so) buddies, trying to find if somebody, somewhere had even hinted they were going to try something this audacious and, to the best of his limited knowledge as far as blood wards were concerned, nigh impossible.
Dumbledore watched him with piercing eyes as he came to a conclusion. "If it had been the Dark Lord himself, at the height of his power," he mused, "then he could have done it. None of the remaining death eaters have neither the power nor the brains to defeat something as old and powerful as blood wards."
Dumbledore seemed to sag. "Then it's young Harry who has been taken then?" he asked grimly. 'Possibly dead' he did not add. Could not bring himself to. Snape did not answer. He did not need to.
"I warned you, Albus." he said softly after a moment's hesitation, "Of the sort of people that Petunia and her husband were. Blood wards can only go so far if the people he's with have no desire to protect him."
Dumbledore's eyes narrowed. "Surely they wouldn't, Severus. I was quite clear in letting Petunia know that she would incur my displeasure were anything to happen to young Harry."
Severus snorted. "Headmaster, the day you're quite clear is the day I decide to dance in the great hall in a tutu. And besides, threats only work if the other side understands. And with Petunia and her husband, I highly doubt it. But," he continued, grabbing a couple of vials off his desk," Time is passing. Shall we? "
And the old man grabbed the other's hand and they disappeared.
Vernon Dursley was having a capital day. After the giant of a man had taken Harry to God knows where, he'd packed up and left the island, coming straight home to Little Whinging. Well, maybe with a bit of a detour for a light snack to calm the nerves. On arrival, he'd been pleasantly surprised with the lack of one abnormal little boy. The day had passed peacefully, no more infernal owls, no giant men knocking down doors and scaring their poor Dudley.
The next day had dawned even brighter with Harry still not making an appearance. Vernon was beside himself with joy! Maybe those weirdos had taken him to live with his own people, wherever that was. Although he did regret that he would not be able to beat some normalcy into the boy. The little scum had hardly been appreciative of the effort, had he? Ungrateful little wretch.
Petunia was looking a bit worried, though. And Vernon would have been too if it'd been a normal boy. But his nephew was one of those and who knew what went on in their heads. So he calmed Petunia down and went about his day. Little Dudley did ask him about his cousin once he'd recovered from the frightful shock that giant, Hagrid or something or the other had given him (bless his little heart, he was so caring), but Vernon had sent him off with a candy bar and a stern suggestion not to bring it up again.
The next day dawned even brighter and Vernon was convinced that he'd seen the last of the little freak. Well, it was high time that the cupboard under the stairs was put to good use. It'd need a nice little cleaning though. And if that freed up some space in Dudley's second bedroom, then maybe they could make that into a playroom or maybe a nice little study or something.
And thusly was Vernon engaged in thoughts of interior design and what not when the doorbell rang. Petunia seemed to be busy in the kitchen cooking up something truly fattening and so he picked his bulk off the sofa and answered the door. Outside stood a pale man with longish hair wearing a sensible black overcoat over a black shirt and slacks. The other one though was a geezer wearing flowing robes whose clashing colour schemes and obnoxious patterning made his eyes want to water. He needn't need to be a genius to know this was one of them.
Face setting in a pugnacious scowl that had stayed with him ever since his first boxing match in Smeltings, he growled, "Your kind ain't welcome here." and made to shut the door, but the pale man shoved his foot in the doorway. "Sorry to impose, my dear lad" began the geezer, "I'm Albus Dumbledore and this charming man here is my associate Severus Snape." Snape sneered. "I'm Headmaster at the school Harry will be attending and I thought I'd check up on him, given his rather special situation."
Face growing redder by the minute, temper rising by the metre, Vernon nearly screamed, "Are you playing some kind of joke, old man?! Your kind was the one that took him away. He went with that giant a couple of days ago and we haven't heard anything since. Now good day to you." and shoved the door closed on them.
Petunia popped out from the kitchen, looking anxious. "I heard you shouting, love. Some obnoxious salesman?"
"Worse. It was one of his kind. Called himself Dumbledore or something."
Petunia paled dramatically and would have nearly fainted had a chair not magically moved underneath her. Vernon's eyes bulged and he swirled around to see the door open, Dumbledore wand in hand. "Now, now, , that's no way to treat guests, is it?" he asked mildly.
They sat awkwardly in the living room, the Dursleys sans Dudley, Dumbledore, and Snape. Vernon was currently alternating between glaring at the two of them and trying to comfort Petunia.
With all the assumed oblivion of old people, Dumbledore continued talking as though they hadn't just barged into a man's home and that the homeowner looked positively murderous. "Three days ago, I sent Hagrid, you know, the rather large fellow who you seem to be acquainted with, to deliver Harry Potter's letter to him personally, seeing as our owls seemed to be having some trouble." Vernon glanced away a bit guiltily at that. "Anyhow, Hagrid returned on the morrow and informed me that he'd delivered the letter and taken young Harry to Diagon Alley to get him school supplies, following which he'd put him on a train home. He also told me that he seemed woefully uninformed about the wizarding world in general and his family circumstances in particular," and at this, he glared, just a wee bit, nearly a touch and go thing, at Petunia, "but that's for another day. But this morning, by certain means, I found that the wards I'd set here to protect him had fallen, which would only happen in a few circumstances. And here you are telling me that Harry has not yet returned home."
"We thought that horrible Hagrid fellow had taken him away!" wailed Petunia. "How were we supposed to know the little freak would be coming back?" growled Vernon, obviously incensed by his wife's distress.
"Little freak, you say?" Snape murmured, eyes glinting dangerously. Before the younger man could do anything, Dumbledore intervened. "Do you happen to have anything of Harry's? We could use it to track him down?" Assuming that he was still alive. Both Petunia and Vernon started looking a little shifty at that. "May we see Harry's room?" Dumbledore pressed. The couple remained silent. The Headmaster leaned back and looked speculatively at them, Then he touched his wand to the floor and murmured a spell. Immediately, the ground lit up with luminescent footprints, each a different colour. Disregarding the two adult-sized ones, the two wizards followed the traffic of the slightly bigger set of child's footprints, backtracking it to a bedroom.
Vernon suddenly seemed to have found his voice and growled, "Don't you take your strangeness in there! That's Dudley's room!" And so Dumbledore and Snape turned to the other set of child's footprints and followed its traffic. Most of it led to two places. One was the kitchen. The other was a cupboard under the stairs. Snape stepped up to it and pushed the door open, stepping inside. Dumbledore would have followed, but it seemed too cramped a space. Presently the potion's master returned carrying a couple of rags and some broken toys. The little group trooped downstairs and all the while Dumbledore remained strangely silent.
When they were all settled once more in the living room, the old wizard leaned back in his chair thinking. Finally, after a long silence, he began in a rather conversational tone, "There are only a few ways that the blood wards fail. One, they could have been overpowered by a truly exceptional wizard, but seeing as how you're all alive, I assume that's not the case. Two, they would fail if Harry Potter were to stay away from this home for an extended period of time, say a year or so. Three, they would fail if he were to die. And four, they would most definitely fail if young Harry wilfully, definitively renounced this place as home." Suddenly his eyes flew to Petunia and Vernon, the fury burning in them pinning the frightened couple in place. "And you'd better hope, it's the third."
After their little jaunt at the Dursleys', Dumbledore made a beeline for Arabella Figg's. The door had been answered by a pleasantly surprised , who then went on to become unpleasantly surprised when the usually calm Dumbledore expressed his disappointment about her not only failing to help Harry while he was obviously being mistreated but also not noticing that the boy had been gone for a whole two days in no uncertain terms.
It was with a heavy heart that the duo, well Dumbledore anyway, Snape was still feeling conflicted about feeling sorry for the miniature James Potter, left Arabella and came to sit down in the park in Surrey. After slumping for about a minute or so (Dumbledore was, for all his athleticism, still old as heck), the Headmaster turned to Snape and held out a hand. Snape wordlessly put the hairs and torn clothing he'd managed to salvage from Potter's room into Dumbledore's open palm.
"Why, Severus," began the old man, some of his twinkle coming back, "I was just asking for a hand up, but I guess this is good too." The younger man just snorted. "Well, my boy, let's see if this works."
Dumbledore reached into his voluminous robes and brought out a crude doll. He then proceeded to wrap the hair and clothes around it and drew his wand, pointing it at the figure and murmuring an incantation over and over again. Briefly, the doll glowed green and where before there had been a featureless doll, now stood an exact miniature of Harry. Dumbledore set it on the ground and watched it scurry away. "Well, I'm off to the castle Severus. A man my age nearly isn't in any condition to go around running after magic dolls. Why don't you go after it and get word to me when you've found something out?
A/N: And that's it. Read and review as always. I'm really sorry about the somewhat irregular posting schedule, but real life is keeping me busy as a bee. But I promise I'm not gonna abandon this.
