Petunia is surprised when she wakes up to the sun streaming over the horizon staining the sky a brilliant red. Her night dress is drenched with dew, and she aches all over. The sound of birds in the air are like a balm to her soul. Pushing herself up, she collapses as the pain in her hips tell her that they're still badly damaged. Perching on her elbows she sees a stone wall a short way off. Determined to see Harry again, she painfully drags her way over to the wall. Pulling herself up onto the wall, she cries in relief when she sees a country lane on the other side. Raising her hand she prays that she can call the knight bus, the signature bang echoes through her mind as she loses the battle with consciousness.
Stan Turnpike is expecting an easy morning shift as normal as he was on last night too, but Angie has come down with flu, and even with pepper ups, it's bad for business if your customers get sick. Ernie takes off as they get a signal from the detection net that someone is calling for the bus. A few minutes later they're on a country road in Dorset with not a house in sight, no obvious passengers either.
Sighing at one of the more annoying aspects of the job he gets down and checks to see if they've fallen over, though it's a bit early for drinking. Finding no one, he gets back on the bus and is about to tell Ernie to go when he sees a woman in a sodden gown lying over the wall on the other side.
"Ernie, wait up." He levitates the woman off the wall and round to the bus. Seeing the dried blood running down her leg he starts to panic.
"We need to get her to St Mungo's, let me get her into a bed first though."
He then pulls the lever to turn the bus back into the night configuration and levitates her into a hammock. As he positions her he gets a good look at her face.
"Blimey, it's Petunia Dursley. Ernie step on it."
Half an hour later they were squeezing through london traffic and arrived outside St Mungo's. Getting off he walks up to the shop mannequin "It's Stan Turnpike from the Knight Bus, I've got an unconscious witch onboard and I need an hand getting her off. It looks like she's hurt."
A few people came out of the door, and a couple of them immediately cast some notice me not charms on the pavement, while the last went on board to get Petunia. They stiffened her and levitated her into the hospital, Stan trailing behind. The duty Auror pulled him to one side to get the details of the story.
"Yeah, we picked her up in the middle of Dorset, right tiny road that was hella trouble if we met a tractor going the other way. Anyway, we got a weak signal, and when we arrive there was no one there. So we was about to leave and I saw her draped over the wall on the other side of the road. I stop Ernie from leaving and levitate her into a hammock."
"So is she someone you know?"
"Yeah, she looks like a younger version of Petunia Dursley, we started picking her up in August, I remember because she travelled with Harry Potter. I think he called her his Aunt.
"Anyways since then she's been travelling to a place in Crawley quite often, started out it was always Harry with his wand, and then she started doing on her own. Thinking about it, I've never seen her with a wand either."
He then starts rambling on about the people he's seen her with, and going off at tangents until he was just rambling. The Auror eventually cut him off and said that they had enough information.
Healer Williams was an experienced trauma witch, and she thought she was ready for everything. But this horrified her. She'd seen worse from some of those unfortunate witches that were forced to work Knockturn Alley at night, but this was the first time she'd seen it without an ounce of magic involved. They got her onto a bed and she was running the injury diagnostics. Broken Pelvis, 3 cracked ribs, bruised kidneys, contusions all over her body, and vaginal bruising consistent with.
"Hold everything, she's not dying and we need to get Aurors here to do an official diagnostic. It looks like she's a rape victim. So short term potions only. Witches only from here on out, we don't want her magic lashing out if she mistakes one of the mediwizards for her rapist."
Amelia Bones was a very stressed witch. She'd inherited a shambles of a department from Crouch, and then the idiots in charge had slashed their budget 'because they were no longer at war'. The imbeciles completely forgot that they didn't get an increase in budget for the war, so what they were doing is cutting into the running costs. As it was she had just enough staff to cover all of the jobs, as long as no one was injured or got sick.
Then the call came in from St Mungo's and of course it has to come to her as she's the senior witch on duty today and it's a rape case. Who else is on? Hammer, she saw her in the office.
"Hammer, we've got a rape at St Mungo's, one Petunia Dursley, grab what details we have and then take another witch and get over there."
With that she went back to trying to work out how to staff everything so that there were enough Aurors on soft duty for events like this, while also making sure all of the positions that needed to be staffed around the clock were staffed. I suppose that one good thing about the ancient laws surrounding the witching hour are useful for ensuring that she only has to staff 23 hours of the day rather than 24. Any way I need at least 5 people on the Monitor at all times, though I could probably train a few people up from other departments, they just need to be able to read apparition co-ordinates, and magnitudes. That leaves 4 Aurors needed. She looked up at a knock on her office door.
Hammer entered and handed her a folder, "You're going to want to be in on this one. She's the aunt and magical guardian for Harry Potter. Aurors responded to an accidental magic episode in Wales in August, and assumed that she was a squib as there were no wands. But a couple of days later she takes over the Guardianship of Mr Potter. This suggests that she's a full magical, though we have no Apparition licence on record. And then there's this."
She hands Amelia a blood signed contract.
"Merlin, what witch would willingly sign something like this. So what do you think? She was 'home schooled' and sold to this sick fuck after being forced to sign the contract, and this last event was enough for her magic to break the contract?"
"Another thought, if she's Harry's Aunt she'd have grown up during the war. Maybe her magic was bound before she appeared on our radar and the surge we saw in August was her bindings breaking trying to save Harry."
"That's almost worse. But we're speculating and wasting time, so let's go; and someone send a message to the school to let Harry know something's happened."
They apparated over to St Mungo's and got a debrief from the duty Auror, yet another post she needed to keep filled in the future.
"Thank you, get back to the office and send someone to take over. I need you to contact this… Dan and Emma Granger, they might have more information about Dursleys living conditions. If they do, see what you can get out of them, and if you get an address take a couple over there to have a look. Watch out for the weird wards though. If the bastard's there, arrest him and throw him in a cell."
With that they found their way to the ward that Petunia had been placed in.
"How is she?"
"Bad, initial scans show her magic is almost depleted, it's a miracle that she even managed to summon the Knight bus, especially without a wand."
"Ok, I'm authorising a full array of criminal diagnostics, can you also check for any lingering bindings as our current theory is that her magic was bound and she forcefully released it during an event in August."
An hour passed as the Mediwitch went through the diagnostics and catalogued around 12 years of abuse, 1 successful pregnancy, multiple miscarriages due to uterine adhesions, several broken bones, and a history of internal damage consistent with punches. It would make for grim reading, and it was worse for those who had to listen to the clinical interpretations of the results. She had no signs of any bonds, obliviations, or charms applied to her, so they were at a loss until they were able to question her. Which wasn't going to be any time soon, as the healers were keeping her asleep until her magic levels recovered somewhat. If they woke her up now, she'd just be in pain as none of their treatments could be used until her magic could sustain them. It's why most squibs left the magical world, or were kicked out. She couldn't imagine living in a world where you could see what was there but not participate.
Shaking herself out of her thoughts she returned to the matter at hand. "Ok, there's not much more we can do now, let's get back to the office, and we'll see what comes back from the Grangers. When do you think she'll wake up?"
"Probably either this evening or tomorrow morning."
"Do you think it would be an idea to bring Harry down so that he's here when she wakes?"
"Yes, having a friendly face can only help."
"OK, I'll go and get him this afternoon. It's a shame that it's Halloween, I always enjoyed the feast in the evening."