Harry and Merope to the Rescue - Chapter 33
Disclaimer:
I don't own the HP universe, unfortunately.
The public outcry against one Molly Weasley was phenomenal. She received so many howlers and hexed letters that she had to send the children to her Aunt Muriel's for their safety. Poor Ronald had opened one letter before Molly had been able to stop him that was filled with bubotuber pus, causing the poor child extreme pain for the length of time it took Molly to mix up a healing salve, as taking him to St. Mungo's for treatment would have been out of the question, considering the public's current hatred of all things Weasley..
On top of all of that, Arthur Weasley had been demoted at the Ministry, as it had been proven that he had at least some knowledge of the plans being made between his wife and Albus Dumbledore, even though he had not been privy to all of them.
Bilius Weasley had found himself the recipient of a heart wrenching letter from his nephew, Bill Weasley, who was in his first year at Hogwarts. All of the child's friends had turned against him and he seemed to have incurred the wrath of the entire school, just because of who his parents were and what they had done. This letter caused Bilius to get in contact with his parents and brothers to discuss among themselves about sending a petition to the Ministry for custody of Arthur and Molly Weasley's children, or at the very least make sure they were treated by a mind healer, due to the entire ordeal.
While the Weasleys were experiencing the backlash of the revealing of Dumbledore's schemes, the Potters, Blacks, and Remus were having discussions and debates of their own, regarding if they should reveal or how much to reveal about Little Harry's adoption. Ultimately, it came down to discussions with Mad-Eye Moody that helped the Potters come up with an acceptable version of the truth about Little Harry and his adoption.
It had been about a week after the article in the Daily Prophet that Harry received an owl from Moody requesting a meeting. As Harry had been expecting it to happen sooner rather than later, he had already prepared a one-use portkey to Potter's Refuge and sent it back with the owl. Harry then sent Moody a patronus explaining to expect the owl and that the password was CONSTANT VIGILANCE.
Moody arrived about an hour later, immediately dropping into a crouched position, or at least the best he could with his wooden leg, wand in hand, magical eye swirling around in his head in search of possible threats.
Little Harry giggled and asked, "What's he doing, Daddy? He looks funny doing that."
Moody just grunted in response and straighted back up into a standing position. Turning to Harry he nodded and said in greeting, "Potter." Then he surveyed the rest of the parties present, which happened to be Sirius, Remus, Merope, and Little Harry.
Harry gave a firm nod and brief smile, "Hello, Moody. Please have a seat, I'm sure we're in for quite the discussion."
Moody grunted, but limped his way over to an open seat. "I take it you already know why I'm here," grumbled Moody.
Harry nodded and said, "Yes. And while I trust you to keep what I tell you quiet, I'm going to require a secrecy oath for much of what I need to tell you."
Moody crossed his arms, leaned back, and asked, "Well, why should I agree to that?"
Harry exchanged a look with Merope, who patted him on the leg in encouragement. Returning his attention to Moody, he held his gaze steady as he lifted the fringe of his hair to reveal the scar on his head and said, "Does this answer your question?" Even though the scar was very faint, it was still more than obvious when one's attention was drawn to it.
Moody's eyes widened in shock as he looked from the adult Harry to the child Harry, mouth opening and closing as if it had forgotten how to form any words. After a couple of incoherent moments, Moody growled, "What in Merlin's name did you do, Potter?"
Harry gave him a grim smile and said, "Well, Moody, it's a long answer, but I'm going to need that oath first."
Remus said, "Well, before you all get started, why don't Padfoot and I take Little Harry outside to play down at the beach so that you can speak in privacy. We have no need to hear it all again."
Little Harry asked, "Can Basil come, too?"
Sirius gave a little grimace, but said, "Sure, pup. You can help find Basil a nice rock to sun on.."
"Yay!" exclaimed Little Harry, who absently put his toys away with the wave of his hand, before he took off running to his room for a pair of sandals. Moody was the only adult that was shocked, as all the others had experienced the phenomenon enough to no longer be surprised by it.
Everything went much smoother after Moody had given his oath and Harry had assured him that his kind of time travel did not create repercussions such as paradoxes or the end of the world. In order to explain his method of time travel, he explained his and Merope's MoD powers, in addition to the two previous timelines he had experienced, then he told of what really happened when they arrived here.
Upon the conclusion of Harry's story, Moody said, "Well, I can't say I blame you for taking out the death eaters, not that I did before, good riddance I say, but especially because of what you interrupted them doing upon your arrival. I'd say they were well beyond any hope for rehabilitation." Looking at Harry sternly he said, "I'm also glad to know you've taken out the other horcruxes."
Harry nodded and added, "Yes, but I have no way at this point of knowing if he still needs to be resurrected again before he can be killed for good, or if he dissipated after the last horcrux was destroyed, or if he'll dissipate after whatever animal he possessed dies. If he does show up again, I promise you won't have to worry about him, especially since he can't get to any of his followers." Moody grunted in response.
Turning to Merope, Moody asked, "So you're Voldemort's mum?"
"Well, if you want to get technical, I would have been his mum if Harry hadn't saved me from that fate when he arrived in my timeline," responded Merope. Moody gave a thoughtful nod to that.
Harry cleared his throat and said, "Now, moving to the matter at hand. I'll tell you right now, I have no intentions of revealing my time traveling stories to anyone else, so as far as the rest of the world knows, I'm still James Potter's cousin who was not present in Britain during the war.
"I originally had no intention of revealing Little Harry's adoption, if I could help it, but I also wasn't naive enough to believe we could keep it a secret forever. I purposefully misfiled the paperwork, but I'm still surprised that no one has come across it yet."
Moody sat quietly for a moment and said, "Well, since he's missing the scar, he won't be immediately recognized, because the stories circulating are that he received a lightning bolt scar when he defeated Voldemort." Harry nodded for him to continue.
"We could do a few things, one is we see if we can find any recent deaths of a child that was born close to the same time as Little Harry, hope that they are an orphan, transfigure the child to look as Little Harry is believed to look, and then report that the child was found dead. Then you would inherit all the Potter properties and vaults, leaving Little Harry to inherit from you."
Harry gave a small grimace and said, "Don't think I haven't thought about that, but at the same time I don't want to have to force Little Harry to pretend that he was never James and Lily's child for the rest of his life."
"Well, like I said, it's just one way it could be handled. Although, that doesn't mean that Little Harry can't come out later, after all the dust settles, and explain that it was done for his safety, so that none of Voldemort's free followers could come after him," said Moody.
"Perhaps," said Harry.
"Another option would be to reaffirm that you arrived back in Britain after receiving word of your cousin's passing through the Goblins, where you were then able to trace down Little Harry's location with the muggles, who were under attack by the free Death Eaters when you arrived, but you didn't arrive early enough to save them, only the child. So you quickly got in and got him out and left, keeping his location with you a secret because of the danger you realized the child was in at the time." explained Moody.
Harry shook his head and said, "Someone is bound to mention that the DEs disappeared that same night and that I was surely the cause of it."
Moody frowned in thought and said, "Yeah, I suppose you're right on that. Abraxas Malfoy would be all over that."
Merope, having been letting the men talk strategy, piped in, "What about if we use part of that story, we tell the public that the goblins notified us of the Potters' attack and that Sirius Black had been unavailable to take custody of Little Harry, which left the responsibility to us. When we arrived, we took a couple of weeks to track down where the child was being hidden, and upon seeing the conditions upon which the child was being kept, we took the child from the muggles without speaking to them and replaced a golem resembling the child so that the muggles wouldn't notice."
"What about if someone asks why the golem was not there when their deaths were being investigated?" asked Harry.
Merope said, "The golem was tied to the aunt's lifeforce and would have dissipated at the moment of her death." Moody grunted. Merope added, "And we explain that we kept the adoption a secret, because the goblins gave us a few cryptic warnings that we took seriously."
"Yeah, that could be a plausible story," Moody said, "but how do you explain the lack of a scar?"
Harry shrugged and said, "We'll just say that it healed properly after removing the debris that was negligently left inside of it, causing it to remain irritated and inflamed."
"Yeah, that should work," said Moody.
THE DAILY PROPHET
THE POTTERS SPEAK OUT
By: Rita Skeeter
My dearest readers, it appears that the Boy-Who-Lived was secretly adopted by his cousins, Hadrian Potter and his wife Mary, who mysteriously arrived back in Britain not long after the war ended.
The child is said to be alive and well after being found abused and neglected at the hands of the child's muggle relatives where the Late Headmaster Dumbledore, in his infinite wisdom chose to leave him.
A statement was made by Mr. Hadrian Potter, "We thank you for your concern for our son. We had been keeping his location a secret because we had been made aware of the nefarious plans that had been made by the Late Mr. Dumbledore; therefore, we felt it necessary to do all in our power to keep our custody of him a secret until we knew that Dumbledore would no longer be a threat to him."
When asked when we could expect to see young Harry out in public, Mr. Potter had this to say: "We will be comfortable taking him out in public only when it will be guaranteed that he will not be bombarded with strangers trying to come up and touch him and crowd him. He's still a young child and that would be very disconcerting to him, as he is used to small crowds. Also, it is our wish that he just be treated as a normal child, he does not require your hero worship, which would only serve to remind him that his parents were murdered while he survived."
There you have it folks, if you see the Potters and young Harry in public, please be courteous and give him space!