Dan woke up groggily to the insistent sound of someone pounding on the door. Why some people refused to use the doorbell he never understood. Glancing at the clock he noticed that it was only 7 50 in the morning, 10 minutes before their alarm would normally go off. Slipping out of bed, Emma groaned and started to wake up as the mattress shifted, he grabbed a dressing gown and shuffled down to the front door. Opening it a crack he saw two men in robes.
"Good morning sir, are you Mr Granger?"
"Speaking."
"I'm Auror Ruperts, and this is Auror Phelps, may we come in?"
"Aurors?"
"Magical Police."
Waking up as though he'd dumped his face in cold water as he couldn't think of any other reason for them to be there, he automatically responded: "Is Hermione OK?"
"We're not here about Hermione, a Petunia Dursley was admitted to St Mungo's at around 7:30 this morning and the bus driver said that she'd been visiting you frequently."
"Well, you better come in." He opened the door to let them in, dreading the answer to the question of what happened.
As he's walking past the stairs he calls up "Emma, the magical police are here."
He then leads them into the sitting-room he'd have preferred the study, but stuff was still left out from last night. "Please, take a seat, can I get you anything?"
"No, we're fine thank you."
"Sorry about this, we've had problems with magic blowing up electronics, so I don't want to risk anything." Dan unplugs the TV and HiFi from the wall as he says this.
The Aurors look at each other, "Your daughter must be a very powerful witch then."
"Oh, she is" but I'm more worried about Emma and myself.
5 minutes later Emma came downstairs and into the sitting room wearing a nightdress and a dressing gown.
"Well, we're all here, what did you want to know?"
"Petunia was found by Stan from the Knight Bus, and she was in a bad way. She was admitted to St Mungo's about half an hour ago. Initial scans showed that she'd been sexually assaulted and beaten badly enough to…" Auror Phelps trailed off as Emma's hair started to float around her head and things in the room started to rise up too.
"Emma, Emma, you need to calm down. She's safe now so getting angry isn't going to solve anything." Dan puts his hand on his wife's hand as he can feel her magic struggling to go out of control.
Roberts panics and fires out a stunner, knocking Emma out and everything comes crashing to the floor. Seeing the spell hit her, Dan spins round and his magic lashes out punching Roberts and his chair through the wall behind him. As he rounds on Phelps, Phelps puts his hands up to show that they're empty and he's not a threat.
"Mr Granger, Mr Granger, she's fine it was just a stunner and she's unconscious." His reassuring tone and placating gestures bring Dan down from the towering rage he was in. Then three pops were heard through the hole in the wall.
"It's ok. It's ok, they just detected the surge in magic, and it's a standard response." Before calling out the hole "Auror Phelps here, everything's under control, we just delivered some bad news"
"Dan, I've got a calming draft here, and it will force your emotions under control, I'd like you to take it so that we're no longer in danger."
Dan stared at him for a long moment still angry about his wife being attacked in their own home.
"Just put it on the table."
Carefully Phelps pulls a small vial out of a pouch at his side and places it on the table.
Dan looks at it, then carefully picks it up and takes the top off. Sniffing it out of reflex he takes a chance and downs it. Almost immediately his anger recedes and he's able to think clearly.
"I'm sorry about that, I couldn't think after he attacked my wife."
"Completely understandable sir, if you don't mind I'm going to banish the same potion into your wife's stomach and then wake her up."
"OK."
Phelps does that and with exaggerated motions and calling out the spell, he rennervates Emma.
"Ugh, why do I feel flat?"
Dan hugs her shoulder still looking towards Phelps, "We've just been given calming potions love, we were getting a bit out of control."
Seeing that things were back under control Phelps went over to the hole to check in on the squad that turned up and spoke with the Aurors outside. He came back in and walked over to Dan and Emma.
"We're going to need to send Auror Roberts to St Mungo's as he broke his shoulder and bruised his neck. Would you mind if I brought one of the other Aurors in?"
Dan sighed and shared a look with Emma. "I guess that will be fine, we should probably move to another room where it's not so messy."
"If you show me where it is, we'll get this fixed up and then I'll come and join you."
"Do you mind if we watch?"
"No, go ahead."
With that they start using magic to repair the wall and furniture.
"Does this use magic to keep it together when you're done? As Petunia's familiar eats spells that aren't anchored to runes."
Emma gasps and clasps her hands to her mouth, "Oh no! I know what happened now, we didn't see Nixie with her last night, that means that she was at home with Vernon and nothing else to eat." Dan's face goes ashen as the implication of that goes through his head, thinking back to the fact that he'd been obliviated in Wales when Petunia used magic for the first time.
Phelps says to another Auror quietly "You know, when we arrived I thought that Hermione was a muggleborn, as they didn't recognise the term Auror, and now." He curses mentally as it becomes apparent it wasn't quietly enough as he sees Dan and Emma's shoulders slump.
"You weren't actually wrong when you thought that." Dan replies softly.
Both Aurors turn towards Dan at that. "What do you mean?"
"Oh, shit I didn't mean to say that." Emma punches Dan on the arm.
"Language."
Smiling sheepishly at her Dan continues "You know that you think of The Dream as a fairy tale? Well it's not and our daughter pulled us along to prove it. And I guess when people with no magic go there we get magic."
Phelps curses under his breath. "This sounds completely unbelievable. I'm just going to try and catch Bones at St Mungo's and ask her to come here and bring some veratasium, it's a truth potion that makes you incapable of outright lying, we sometimes use it with hostile suspects, though it's considered Hearsay in the court, as it only means that what you said is the truth as you know it, not that it's the whole truth or that you're right."
With that he disappears with a pop, and knocks on the front door a few minutes later.
Dan gets up and goes to answer the door again. "For future reference, if you're visiting a non-magical house, we normally have a doorbell, which is more audible than knocking on the door." Dan demonstrates by ringing the doorbell.
I'll go make us some tea while we wait, and then we'll fill you in on what we know. I'll also call the Surgery and let them know that we've had a family emergency and we won't be in this morning.
Vernon wakes up shivering in a dark cave. He's not sure where that freak of a wife went, but he survived. Next time he gets his hands on her she won't be as lucky. His throat burning due to lack of drink and the alcohol he drank, drives him to crawl out of the cave. Looking around he sees snow collected on the rocky surfaces around. Gathering handfuls of it, he greedily gobbles it down, allowing some of it to melt in his mouth to soothe his throat. He fights through the ice-cream headache until he's eaten three double handfuls of snow.
Clumsily he climbs up on top of the rock that formed the mouth of the cave he hid in and cranes his neck trying to find any sign of civilisation. The only thing that stands out is a stand of trees of in the distance, apart from that it's rolling tundra as far as the eye can see, with the occasional snow-covered lump. Not having any better idea, he stumbles off on numb bare feet towards the trees, his bulk doing more to protect him from the cold than his thin pyjama shirt. The sharp stones cut into his feet leaving a trail of blood behind him.
He was within spitting distance of the trees when he heard a snuffling noise behind him. Looking back he saw a huge white bear with a spiral horn coming out of it's nose. Taking the better part of valour he ran as best as a morbidly obese man can towards the trees. His sudden movement caught the eye of the bear behind him, and it roared and chased after him. Making it to the tree line mere seconds before the bear, he grabbed onto a branch and tried to climb a tree. The first branch snapped under his weight, the second held but he couldn't pull himself up and his feet slipped off the bark. He felt a sharp pain in his back as he had a moment to look down as the end of a horn poked out of his stomach before it glowed a pale orange and all of his muscles seized up and held him in the pose he was holding. The horn withdrew and warm blood ran down his leg almost burning hot as it reached his frozen foot. He heard the bear rear up and then felt it claw against his head. He heard a loud crack as his head lolled to one side as his body went numb. Before his vision went dark, he saw a splash of blood in front of him as he started swinging from the branch, and the bear pushed past him to get at the parts that had fallen to the floor, leaving a streak of blood on its back.