CHAPTER 19: HIS BEST INTERESTS


After Sparhawk had drifted off, finally, Adelaide got up from her bedside vigil and made her way to the nurse, Madame Pomfrey. The woman turned an awkward glance at her. "I'd like to see Mr Dumbledore "

"Ha...Sparhawk?" asked the nurse.

"He's asleep"

"Oh, good."

Madame Pomfrey made her way to a grand fireplace at the end of the ward. Reaching into a box that was placed on the mantle, she grabbed some powder and threw it among the smoldering coals, and with a woosh, the fireplace came alive with green flames. And then, much to Adelaide's surprise and horror, she called out "Dumbledore's office!" and stuffed her head in the fire.

While Adelaide curbed her initial impulse to snatch the woman back, for she could smell no burning and hear no screams, the neck attached to the now buried face, bobbed and nodded, and finally withdrew revealing a countenance that was thankfully unharmed. Well, it would be daft if everytime you had to make the equivalent of a telephone call, for that's what she assumed it was, you'd have to burn your face off.

"He'll see you in his office. I'll take you there."


Adelaide had followed Pomfrey through winding corridors and moving staircases filled with animated portraits, imposing suits of armor, and some truly medieval lighting. If this was how Hogwarts, oh what a name, was going to be, she would have to reconsider sending Sparhawk here.

At last, they reached a corridor with a lone gargoyle set in the wall. As Adelaide was admiring the truly tasteless decor, Pomfrey stepped up to the gargoyle and brought her face quite close to its ear. Her hands snaked up and down its muscled, granite length, lingering here and there. If Adelaide had ever seen a gargoyle get rather uncomfortable, this would be it.

Red and panting and heaving, Pomfrey whispered, "Lollipops" in a low, husky voice.

It seemed the gargoyle couldn't swing out of the way fast enough. A spiral staircase, well elevator really since it moved on it's own, took them up to a rather ordinary oak door. Pomfrey, who seemed to have returned to some semblance of normalcy, knocked on the door, and from inside wafted out Dumbledore geezerly voice, "Enter"

The door swung open on noiseless hinges to reveal a rather messy room. Despite its high ceiling and bright lighting, the menagerie of moving portraits of mostly elderly men that aligned the wall and the proliferation of books and unidentified gadgets that littered the place gave it a rather dingy feel. In this aged room, seated behind his rather cluttered table, was the elderly headmaster, looking for all the world like a soon-to-be corpse.

But he creaked to his feet nonetheless when Adelaide trooped in, a hot, bothered madame Pomfrey at her heels. "Ah, Poppy! My thanks for escorting here. And welcome to my humble office, Mrs Baker."

Adelaide politely commented on the decor.

"Ah yes, the wallpaper has a long and storied history, but I'm sure you're not here to discuss interior design. What was it you wanted to see me about?"

"I'd like to speak to you about Sparhawk's relatives"

If Dumbledore hadn't perfected the art of looking sad when he was guilty, why, one might have accused him of looking mighty guilty just about then. As it was, the headmaster's dignified visage took on a state of dignified sadness.

"Ah, I see. Well, Poppy, I believe that Mrs Baker and I have some things to discuss in private."

"Oh, well.." the nurse seemed rather taken aback at this sudden dismissal.

"And do visit the gargoyle on the way out, my dear. He seems rather lonely these days"

Well, Dumbledore certainly knew the way to people's hearts. With the headmaster's implicit permission to sexually harass an animated stone, Poppy Pomfrey set out to achieve the same.

Once the geophilic nurse was out of the way, the Headmaster turned to Adelaide, a grave expression on his face. "Do take a seat."

Adelaide Baker wasn't sure about that. It was hard to get worked up when you were sitting. But etiquette and all that.

She slid into the visitor's chair, a rather plain affair in stark contrast to Dumbledore's faux throne.

"So," she began, "Harry's relatives..."

"His aunt and uncle."

"How exactly are they related?"

"His mother's sister."

"Ah. And how exactly did he get there? Were there no others?"

"I left him in their care. They seemed to be the best option at the time. In a better world, he would have been with his Godfather, but that is a discussion for another day"

"You mean Sirius Black?"

Dumbledore seemed momentarily taken aback. Adelaide shrugged, "Just something that I heard. Anyhow, did you ever check up on Sparhawk after that?"

"You mean Harry."

"I mean Sparhawk"

Dumbledore answered easily enough. "I posted an agent of mine, to keep me posted on his wellbeing."

"And this agent, they didn't notice anything amiss?"

"This is beginning to look more and more like an interrogation, "

"You have to understand sir, I am merely concerned regarding my foster son's safety."

"Oh, he's safe enough. You needn't worry about that."

"For now. But what about in ages past? Again I ask, did not your man, or your woman, notice anything amiss."

Dumbledore popped a lemon drop in his mouth. Horrid manners, really. He took a long minute sucking, slurping, and otherwise abusing the confectionery with his tongue before answering, "They did not."

Adelaide nodded and leaned back in her chair. Her eyes seemed somewhere far away. Then, in a flat voice, she began her tale. "When Sparhawk first came to me, Mr Dumbledore, he was rather small, rather thin for his age. Malnutrition, the doctors said. Worrying, but not damning in and of itself. But then there were all these other little things. Old bruises. Healed fractures. Lots of the tiny little buggers apparently. And the absolute loss of memory. They speculate it might have been due to a very traumatic event."

Dumbledore remained silent.

"His aunt and his uncle, Mr Dumledore, more and more it looks like they had been abusing him, wouldn't you say?". There was the slightest hint of danger in her voice now.

Dumbledore sagged. "That is what I thought too."

"Then why the bloody hell didn't you do anything about it!" she exploded. Adelaide Baker was usually a very calm and collected woman, but this, this travesty that these people had played out with her boy's life, pushed her buttons just the right way. At first, she'd been angry at Sparhawk's relatives, but now, she was pretty pissed at the old man. Omission could be just as deadly a crime as commission.

Dumbledore stared at her, his blue eyes wracked with guilt. "You have to understand, I had Harry's best interests at heart. I did what I thought was best under the circumstances!" he pleaded.

"Best under the circumstances?!" she shot back, indignant.

"Harry's mother, Lily, you see. When she sacrificed herself for her son, that act somehow managed to invoke old and powerful magic that would protect her son from Voldemort. But the catch was that it only protected him from Voldemort personally and not from his followers. And with the events that had transpired, every one of them was out to kill Harry Potter. I had to protect him somehow. And so I tapped into the magic that Lily had cast and I managed to create a blood ward that would protect and hide him from those seeking to do him harm. But it could only activate if one of his blood relatives took him in. Everyone on James' side of the family was dead, and on Lily's side, the closest was her sister Petunia. I'd known her when she was a child, and I knew that back then she harboured feelings of envy towards her magically gifted sister, but I'd thought that those feelings had been washed away in the flow of time. How was I to know that the poisonous seed that had been within her had grown into this great venomous vine? And I foolishly left him on their doorstep with a letter, because I knew Petunia despised me, and being there in person would do no good. You do not expect a boy's aunt to naturally abuse him, do you?"

"You should have checked up on him!" Adelaide shot back.

"I couldn't do that in person! You don't seem to realize Mrs Baker, that in the wizarding world, I am a person of some import. If I were to be seen regularly dropping by Privet Drive, even the dumbest death eater would have figured that something was afoot. And that was why I set as my agent. A squib, she would be beneath the notice of the kind of wizard that would be searching for Harry, but she had enough of a foothold in the wizarding world that she would be able to warn me if necessary. What I could not anticipate, me on my lofty pedestal, issuing orders to my subordinates, what I could not anticipate, was how ill-disposed a woman who had just lost her husband and child in a nasty war would be towards this task. Mrs Figg did the bare minimum, making sure he was alive and out of the death eater's radar, but otherwise, she was too caught up in her own despair to pay much mind to Harry. And I..." and here he sucked in a great deep breath, "I was too much mired in all the problems of the wizarding world at large, that I quite forgot about one little boy." And here Dumbledore stopped his brutal self-assessment, head hung in shame.

Adelaide stared at the man in front of her for a long minute. Then she got up and turned to the door. "Well, you just think about that, Mr Dumbledore ."


A/N : I still suffer from that niggling problem in ffnet's story editor where if I use the short form of any salutation, say Mr or Mrs, followed by a period, the entire thing along with the name disappears. Mighty infuriating.

Also, I've been suffering from covid for the past week or so. And contrary to popular belief, the body aflame and the brain boiling in its own juices did not bring forth feverish fits of creativity. All I could think of was wanting to get better. And I'm nearly recovered now.

As always, read and review. Your words of constructive criticism, or Gods willing, unfettered praise, make my day just a little brighter.