16. PHANTOMS OF THE PAST
The past few days had been a lesson in frustration. Dumbledore had been ecstatic to have proof that Harry Potter was really alive and they'd scrambled to get some fake muggle ID's in anticipation of dealing with the muggle authorities. They could subtly confound people enough that whatever story they sold would be accepted and they had high hopes that they could have him back in a few days. But they'd overestimated the power of muggle bureaucracy.
The sheer amount of red tape, forms, and outright incompetence they had to wade through set them back by a week or so. Finally, they succeeded in setting up a meeting with one Stag. They met in a sombre office in Moorgate. Jonathan welcomed them with a smile.
"You're here to talk about Sparhawk?" he asked taking in the duo, old man with his quaint suit and the sallow goth-looking one. "Harry, actually. That's his name, you know," said Dumbledore settling himself down onto one of the plastic chairs. "Is it?" replied Jonathan, somewhat surprised. "Yes, Harry. Harry Potter."
At this Jonathan stiffened, his eyes somewhere far away. "Mr Stag?" prompted Dumbledore and the man looked at them, before quickly looking away. "Oh, sorry, was just thinking of something."
Dumbledore just nodded genially. "Well," he went on, "for some reason, he seems to be registered as Sparhawk in your system. Any idea why?"
"Well," Jonathan said, still looking at something on the wall, "The boy had no recollection of who he was. So we just went with the first name that popped into his mind. I think he got it from one of the kiddie books at the Hospital. Anyway, you're his great grandfather?"
"Yes. Aberforth Wulfric. And this is my attendant, Prince. Well, I'd like to come straight to the matter, " Dumbledore said, looking at Jonathan, who still did not meet his eyes, "We'd like to take Harry home."
"I'm afraid I can't allow that just yet. You see, the boy had most definitely been abused and you're the only family who's come up looking for him. You don't look the type, but we most certainly cannot let you meet him or divulge his information without a thorough investigation of sorts."
Dumbledore sighed and glanced at Snape. He'd have to break out the abusive mother story. Helped a little by the confundus, they had a decent chance of getting valuable information out of the young man here. Dumbledore detested taking advantage of powerless muggles, but desperate times called for desperate measures. Snape made a slight movement dropping his wand from his sleeve into his hand, but it caught Jonathan Stag's attention and he dived for the floor.
"Wizards! You're wizards" he shouted, hiding behind his desk. Dumbledore was surprised at this unforeseen development. "Mr Stag" he began in a calm voice, "We're not here to hurt you. I would never dream of hurting a muggle, or judging by your reaction, a squib."
"Liar!"Jonathan called back from behind his desk, "Your partner pulled out his wand. I saw it!" Dumbledore made to stand, but Jonathan called out in a warning voice, "Stay where you are!" Snape glanced at the Headmaster, asking for permission to do something undoubtedly hostile, but Dumbledore signed for him to stand down.
" Mr Stag..." he began again, in that same level tone, but was cut off by a grim voice issuing from the other side of the table. "We have plenty of rowdy customers here, so I have an alarm button hidden beneath my desk. One push of this and the security is going to come rushing in, followed by the police. I don't know a lot about you folks, but I do know that you're supposed to stay secret. So you just back away, and no funny business, or I'm going to push this button."
"Mr Stag, if you'd just hear me out..."
"No!" he all but screamed, "You people butchered my parents! I want nothing, hear me, NOTHING to do with you. So. GET. OUT!"
Dumbledore sighed and trudged out of the room followed by Snape.
Jonathan felt his hands shake as he turned the key in the ignition. The engine came to life with a roar and he nearly drove into a nearby vehicle getting his car out of the parking lot. Wizards! He'd always dreaded that this day would come in the back of his head, but he'd just hadn't the strength to acknowledge it.
Jonathan had been an orphan, shuttled from foster to foster until he'd finally gotten old enough to get by on his own. That was how he'd known Adelaide Brown. He had been with her for nearly a year and that had been the best year of his life. Period.
But why he'd become an orphan in the first place was a story all by itself. His parents had been what had been known as squibs. Well, his mother anyway. He wasn't sure about his father. And back then, from what little he could vaguely remember, they'd been part of some war. Not a war as in the world war sense of things, but some kind of conflict in the wizarding world. Of which the only thing he'd known was his parents' warnings to stay clear of it. Wizards, according to his mother, were patronizing, contemptuous, discriminatory pieces of shit. But some of them wanted to kill them and other non-magical people, so they were helping the ones who didn't mind them being around. Or so she'd said when she'd let the drink get to her head once.
And he hadn't really cared about it all. Who cared about being a wizard, anyhow? He'd wanted to become a postman, just like his father. Everybody seemed so happy to see him. He didn't know how he would have turned out in the eventual passage of time, but all that became moot when his life was turned upside down one snowy December evening. His father had come home as usual and since his mother seemed to be running late, he'd started on dinner. He'd watched his father carefully cut up the veggies for the salad in his deliberate manner when they heard a huge explosion from the front, followed by laughing voices.
His eyes grew round and fearful; he'd never seen him quite like that. With his strong arms, he'd grabbed him and jumped out the window, landing on the hard concrete below. Jonathan glanced around and caught sight of smoke coming from the front of the house. "Oooooh muggle! Where aaarrree youuuu?" sang a voice from the inside. Slinking to the back, Letterby Stag had stuffed his son in the garbage can and told him to not move, not utter a sound no matter what happened. Then he gave a high-pitched scream and started sprinting down the street. Immediately, there were whoops and cheers from the front of the house. A group of dark-cloaked figures seemed to glide after him, shooting multicoloured jets of light, which always seemed to miss by a hair and Letterby disappeared from his sight, followed a few moments later by the cloaked figures. For a minute or so, there were just the explosions, then after an eerie silence, the screaming started. It was high-pitched, inhuman almost. And it was punctuated all the while by laughter and jeers from the crowd which he could now not see. It went on for how long he couldn't know. It seemed to be an eternity. Then all of a sudden, it went silent. And a great green skull lit up the sky.
Jonathan would like to say that he stayed put, waited for his dad like a good little boy. But he'd had enough. Seven-year-old Jonathan Stag had climbed out of the trash can, terror nearly robbing him of rational thought, and like an animal, he'd crawled to the fence at the back of the house, through a hole in it and he just kept crawling, not daring to get up and walk for fear of getting caught. Sometime later, he'd come to a canal and he'd dropped in and swam as far as his exhausted body would allow, finally washing up on a little platform. Then he'd climbed out onto a park of some sort and climbed the nearest tree he could find and clung on.
The next morning, the caretaker had found him battered, bloody, and blue, his arm at an impossible angle, quite passed out at the base of the tree. He'd spent quite some time in the hospital, where the police had informed him that his father had died in a freak explosion, a gas leakage of some sort. His mother could not be found. Did he have any idea of how he wound up there? He just shook his head at every question they asked. He was beyond terrified.
And since then he had kept the secret of witches and wizards to himself. In fact, he'd had next to no contact with their kind until the Halloween of 1981 when there had been an epidemic of them flooding the streets, congratulating everybody they could find about how some infant named Harry Potter had slain some Dark Lord. Curiosity had overridden terror and he'd gotten a few tidbits out of a really drunk one, namely that the people who murdered his parents were death eaters and now their leader was gone, killed, of all things, by an infant. With that reassuring piece of news, he'd then made himself scarce and life went on.
Until today. Ten years later, a couple of wizards, asking for Harry Potter, which as it turns out was Sparhawk's real name, had shown up at his house. And they'd pulled a wand on him. Which considering that said child had been responsible for killing off the leader of some sort of a terrorist organization did not fill him with great comfort. He'd been lucky that he'd been in such a crowded building. He'd bluffed about the alarm, praying to God that the possibility of capture...no, discovery, would discourage them, for the time being at least and he had been right.
He really had no desire to get himself tangled in these affairs, and all he wanted to do was skip the country, but he couldn't very well leave Ma Baker defenseless. She didn't know the slightest thing about these fellows and how monstrous they could be! She'd be a sitting duck. Maybe he could persuade her to come with him. Or...Oh, he just didn't know! Maybe Adelaide Baker would have a better idea. She'd never guided him wrong.
A/N: And so the spider nears the fly. The anteater nears the ant. The rat nears the corn. The...well, you get the drift. As always, read and review. Your words are the fuel for my fire. P.S. Still having problems with names. I've found leaving out the full stop following Mr works.
