Chapter 20

X-c-X-c-X-c-X

January 9, 1998

The team contracted by the American Ministry of Magic was both grumpy and slightly elated. They were one of five teams that dealt with back taxes owed to the Ministry. And this dumpy old house, large as it was, had just cost them three days of effort to bring down its wards. There had been big nasty wards lurking behind and weaved into simplistic ones. The whole thing had operated in a half dozen different zones, with each zone independent of the others, requiring them to start from scratch every time in the ward breaking. Whoever had crafted the damn things was a certifiable genius and madman, no question.

But now they were inside. They'd do a scouting, see what the assets were in this obviously magical abode, and then report back. No one had paid taxes on the place in twelve years, so the taxes outstanding were massive. And the building itself wasn't in a desirable part of Philadelphia, no. It was quite near to one of the warehouse districts, and not one of the nicer ones.

If they had to fix this place up for sale, assuming there were no assets inside, it wouldn't even cover the tax bill.

The team leader was an old man named Periculum Fletcher. He'd been doing this kind of work for four decades. It was a hard life, but it paid well. And his moral schema didn't seem to mind he was often digging through the detritus of ruined lives.

Periculum tried a simple unlocking charm on the front door. But it wouldn't open. Nor would any of the progressively stronger charms. That was when Periculum realized it wasn't actually a door. It was a nice bit of transfiguration, but not an actual door. It took him and his team thirty minutes to find a section of wall that was actually a door, but heavily concealed.

"Paranoid much," Periculum muttered to himself. Wards like this plus this kind of security through misdirection was usually the hallmark of a very dark structure, a place where adherents to the dark could gather to practice their more disgusting rites and practices.

Periculum had each of his men perform their strongest curse-detection spells. He didn't want to walk into a structure like this blind.

Periculum crossed the doorway first. The inside was as dour as the outside. Everything was covered in nearly an inch of dust. No one had obviously lived inside here for a long time. Periculum had all of his men remain with him as they started searching the first floor. With a place like this, all due caution was required.

The rooms went from odd to strange to utterly puzzling to horrifying in quick succession. Each of them had six sets of bunk beds in them. Each of them was littered with children's clothing. And toys scattered on the floor. And drawings taped to the walls.

Periculum and his team investigated the drawings. They saw names only mentioned in dark stories. Diggory, Wood, and a dozen others. The names of the British War Orphans.

Here.

They'd been here, stacked up in rooms like these. Kidnapped, stolen out of Britain somehow. Warehoused like broken trinkets.

But, the problem was this: they were gone now.

Where had they gone to?

The team began tearing the house apart in earnest, not looking for valuables per se, but more for information.

That last room had shown the signs of a massive battle. There was old blood along one of the walls and dozens of scorch marks on every other surface. But who had been fighting? Adults against the children? Periculum shivered at the thought even though he'd never had children himself.

He pulled out a darkness detector and set to scanning the room. There was nothing left. An Avada Kedavra would leave traces for years, but as Periculum didn't know when this battle had happened, he couldn't look at his darkness detector's result with happiness.

They spent the night tearing the place apart.

It was early the next morning before one of the people on Periculum's team managed to break into the most heavily warded room any of them had seen. It was an office. It was filled to the brim with paperwork of all sorts.

And receipts.

It showed how the children had been brought over to America. It showed who had paid the bribes. It showed that the money funding this whole child warehouse had come from the family vaults of the orphans themselves.

Over and over again the same names appeared. Dumbledore was the most prominent, as he was famous in America as well as in his native lands.

And, just as disturbing, all the transactions had stopped more than twelve years ago. Every one of them. But the records were still here. And the money stolen from those orphans was still floating around somewhere, a lot of money, perhaps a million galleons.

The people on Periculum's team were absolutely furious. And, even though they knew that the American Ministry should have already been notified about all this, they decided on a more direct form of retribution.

Public exposure.

Public excoriation.

Public repudation.

An undeserved reputation in tatters. Public offices stripped. An evil man finally recognized for what he was, someone preying on children. What else had this man and his associated done? What else had the wizarding world overlooked in its perpetual blindness?

Periculum personally duplicated every scrap of paper in the home. Two of his team members took vivid disturbing images of the whole place. The worst was from that scorched room. Blood visible, a severed toy, and scorches on every surface. Periculum could see the headline in the Salem Wizarding News: "British War Orphans Found – and Lost Again: Disturbing Evidence Begs 'Why Were They in America At All?'"

Some days it was good to be blessed an existence without a moral compass. Periculum smiled a feral grin when he dispatched the information off to journalists via the fastest courier. And sent a brief, fragmentary, almost incomprehensible report off to the Ministry via the slowest courier he could find.

It was fun to pit a slow bureaucracy against a voracious free market business. The Wizarding Times would descend on this location hours before the Ministry sought to send any investigators out.

Periculum decided it was time well spent. Maybe some day he'd be acknowledged for his role in bringing down one of wizarding Britain's most revered – and craven – wizards.

X-c-X-c-X-c-X

January 10, 1998

Albus Dumbledore apparated to the beach, as his letter from the Potters had explained. He caught sight of the small trail he was supposed to follow. It really was a beautiful day. The sky was blue, the water was faintly green. Everything smelled wonderfully of the sea.

It was even better than Albus Dumbledore was about to reassert control over a situation that had spiraled out of his sphere of influence. Albus was happy; well, as happy as could be given that Snape had disappeared, along with the man's home and business. But, Albus pushed those unpleasantries aside.

The man had obviously done a runner. Albus had, after all, pushed very hard for Snape to allow his son to visit the folks who ran the Potter Emporium after that invitation was issued.

Oh well. Snape was gone. The man was truly the epitome of unpleasantness. Albus would much rather work his wiles on a worthy target. And…the Potters. Finally, after all these years. He'd been overjoyed when the Potter scion had finally managed to attract Lily Potter. Yes, a pureblood intermarrying with a muggleborn. Better for the genes, better for the wizard that way.

What a child Harry would be. He'd be, what, seventeen now? The perfect age to come back into the fold at Hogwarts. Complete his final year, then Albus could push him towards an appropriate apprenticeship somewhere. Depending on the boy's interests, of course. Managing a shop staffed with house elves wasn't exactly a worthy occupation for the Potter Family. No. That Albus knew. Potters were leaders; seven Ministers of Magic had been Potters. And, perhaps this Harry would be the eighth, but with a powerful man at his back.

Albus could spin stories about how the incompetents at the Ministry were waging war with his business – and were about to go and completely demolish it, Albus knew, but he would keep that fact to himself, considering he had engineered the maneuver himself. What lessons Harry might learn once this Emporium business was gone! How an incorruptable presence inside the Ministry was a necessity. How to maneuver within a bureaucracy, how to determine who was at fault (assuming the truth never fully escaped). Then, with twenty or thirty years of cultivation, Harry could be ready. Assuming he listened to reason.

Perhaps.

Albus spun and respun plots while he ambled away from the beach and up the narrow pathway. He'd been taking the Elixir of Life now for twenty years. He could extend his life indefinitely, just as his mentor Nicholas Flamel had. He had plenty of time to plot and plan.

He stopped suddenly just before he reached the top of the path. There was a delightful little cottage in the distance. But it wasn't exactly a cottage. It radiated warmth and happiness. It even looked a bit, well, like a house made entirely out of candy.

Bizarre.

Albus knew dozens of the muggle fairy tales. A candy house? Here?

He pulled out his wand and began casting spells at the place. There were Muggle-repelling wards in place, as expected, and a few other basic ones. The house itself had no magical signature, at least not one Albus could detect.

He walked carefully up to the structure and touched his finger to it. It was squishy. Frosting, perhaps?

He walked carefully around the house. There were peppermints and lemon sherbets adorning all the windows. There were massive bars of chocolate in place of shutters. The flowers in the small garden behind the cottage/shack were made of spun sugar. It was Albus' fondest wish to see something like this. It was even a greater pull than new woolen socks.

Had Harry put this together for their meeting? Or did the young man also have a sweet tooth? Or was it just a show of something, wealth perhaps?

Albus began deliberating as he continued his slow walk around the small house. When he returned to the front door, he reached out and the door opened even before Albus touched it.

Nice effect, Albus thought.

He cast additional spells. The inside had been magically expanded and there were a number of different magical objects inside, but there was nothing untoward in there.

Albus walked inside. The small cottage outside gave way to an enormous single room inside. It was an impressive space. The candy motif had continued through into the interior. There were seven large tables pushed up against the walls, each with massive bowls full of sweets. There were comfortable chairs decorated in peppermint twist and some in random polka dots of varying bright colors. There was a row of chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, each one crafted using different varieties of translucent sweets. Some were pink, some were yellow, some orange and green.

Albus wandered through the room sampling some of the treats in the bowls. He found a truly magnificent lemon sherbet. And wonderful candies called Mars Bars. What will those Muggles think of next? Perhaps Harry being in the merchanting business wasn't a total loss. He could delegate the business to someone else to run while he listened to Dumbledore's advice regarding politics.

He'd let the Ministry's little raid tomorrow go off as planned. Good for the blood, a little anger and defeat. Made people malleable to suggestion when they were planning their revenge.

He walked around the room sampling additional sweets. Albus had never tried a 'dark chocolate' before but found he rather enjoyed them. The candied orange segments, unfortunately, stuck in his teeth. Tasty with an unpleasant side effect.

He cast Tempus and found that there was only a minute or so until ten o'clock. He wondered if this Harry would look the same as his father, James, had. A striking young lad. Albus began to think of ladies he might pare the boy with. There hadn't been much in the way of muggleborn witches in the last decade. Nor really any pureblood witches of much note. Hmm, a conundrum. Albus filed it away. He'd find a good match for this Potter scion even if he was as ugly as a blast-ended skrewt.

That was when the door to the room opened. A shortish young man with wild black hair stepped inside. He was wearing a bizarrely colored wizard's robe, something even Albus couldn't conceive of wearing. It was green and blue and silver and all the colors seemed to be moving around and almost swirling. It was an extraordinary effect and quite disconcerting. Albus found it very difficult to actually look at this young Harry.

"Harry," Albus shouted out, stuffing another half-eaten Mars Bar into his pocket. "I have waited for so long to see you again. You know, I first met you when you were knee-high to a kneazel…"

Harry gave up a shy half-smile, walked into the room, the door closing automatically behind him. He offered his hand.

"Mr. Dumbledore," Harry said.

"Call me Professor," the older man said.

Harry cocked his head a bit to the side. His eyes narrowed in speculation.

"Mr. Dumbledore, I'm glad we could finally meet. I've long wanted to, you know. But it only became possible very recently."

"Oh," Albus said, filing away the boy's resistance to calling him a professor, "why was that?"

Harry nodded once or twice, as if he had just answered that question. "Please have a seat."

The young man before him was quite a tricky customer, Albus could already see. The disarming setting, the muggle sweets, the dress robes of distraction. And his way of not answering questions. Albus was alarmed and impressed at the same time. Someone had taught this boy considerable skills. Perhaps he could be Minister of Magic within the next decade, assuming he was pliable enough.

Albus decided to be more on his guard than he'd planned. This boy was definitely up to something.

"I found a number of papers among my parent's affects. They wrote fondly of you, Mr. Dumbledore," Harry said.

"Your parents – Lily and James – are dead?"

Harry nodded. That wasn't surprising to Dumbledore, but he acted like it was.

"I had wondered. I am sorry to hear it, of course. They were wonderful students, a bit mischievous, of course, but dear to us all."

"Thank you, Mr. Dumbledore."

"Professor, call me Professor, Harry."

Harry just put on that half-smile again. "Mr. Dumbledore," he said, very clearly, "I wondered why you've been so interested in meeting with me. You've delivered letters to the Potter Emporiums for fifteen years or so now. Why?"

Albus smiled. They were on more familiar ground now.

"Well, I promised your family that I would look after you if anything happened to you, of course. I felt it my duty to try to ensure your safety as best as I could. Whatever method you had of hiding – or whoever hid you – did a very complete job of it. I sent owls to you weekly for the first few years, in addition to the letters I left at the Potter Emporiums… Interesting place, Harry, who set those up originally, I wonder?"

Albus had set down several different questions. He was interested to see which ones Potter would choose to run with.

"Mr. Dumbledore, as you can see, I am quite fine. The provisions my guardians made for me were very acceptable and I had a rather nice childhood. I've even attended a wizarding school, nothing as ancient and august as Hogwarts, of course, but a very good school nonetheless. So, if you have nothing further for me, I'll let you to your day. I have some affairs to take care of in this part of the world before I head back home."

Albus was shocked for a brief moment. His meeting was over? He'd waited fifteen years for this? He hadn't even gotten a chance to set his hooks into Potter yet. And it seemed that Potter knew something of the world he'd missed—Hogwarts and all the rest. So what could he do to salvage this disaster. The boy was over seventeen now, so Albus couldn't just take him into protective custody – for his own good, of course – and he hadn't done anything else. He was a perfectly inoffensive young man. Albus was raging in anger, but keeping a very tight lid on his emotions.

"Oh, that's very kind of you, Harry. But I had plans to talk with you about a number of subjects…"

Albus wasn't used to chasing his prey. He was rather spoiled at having his normal prey just flop over in compliance. He was stretching his political muscles in unpleasant ways right now.

"…so that you can feel comfortable when you reenter society."

Harry gave a full-faced smile. "I don't believe I plan to reenter society, Mr. Dumbledore."

Dumbledore blanched.

"What? I don't understand…"

"Have a nice day, Mr. Dumbledore. I was glad to put a face to all that my parents told me of you in their letters and journals."

Harry stood up and started moving toward the door.

"Please," Albus said.

He knew he needed this young man to stay. He needed the knowledge. He needed to know if Voldemort was truly dead, for one thing. He hated knowing he needed things from other people. He loathed begging.

"Please," he said again, a bit louder.

Harry frowned as he turned around. But he seemed to sag in agreement. "Fine," he said. "I guess I do have a few questions I would like answered."

Albus slumped a bit in his seat in gratitude. He hated feeling like he'd been played. But he knew he had.

X-c-X-c-X-c-X

Neville Longbottom had an enormous smile on his face. He'd been an Apprentice for a week now and he was loving it.

He had twenty hours per week tending greenhouses in America. And another paid ten hours per week to design and create his own combination of exotic and rare plants at a greenhouse on the Potter Estate. He loved the four magical botany masters he'd met.

He'd had the smile on his face for a long time now.

The work in America was really valuable stuff, but not terribly exciting. He was cultivating magical molds of various kinds plus four different herbs. Apparently, the Potter folks had determined a way to use magical plants and molds to help convert nonmagical weeds and agricultural waste products into fuel for their automobiles and other engines.

The whole process was fascinating.

Plus he was drawing up his plans for his own greenhouse. Plus Luna loved her new work at the Technologica, developing items that no one had ever conceived of. A 'celluloid' phone for magical folks. 'Televideors' to watch 'moov-ees' on. Luna rattled off the things she was doing, they seemed insane, but she was quite pleased.

Plus, Neville had made friends with some of the other Apprentices. The Weasleys were all smiles and laughter. One was working on potions and the other primarily on pranks. The clear, water-like potion to make cauldrons explode once any magical ingredient was added to them was something they'd collaborated on just this last week. Prankster's Little Helper, they'd named it.

Neville would have enjoyed something like that when he'd been in Snape's classes. At least then it wouldn't have been just his own cauldrons that exploded and melted.

Neville dipped his quill in the ink again. He was attempting his second revision of his plans for his greenhouse. He wanted to put in a lot of plants that didn't mix well. One would try to eat another. One would emit pollens that were positively poisonous to most plant species. Another burst into flames every forty-two days. It wasn't easy planning all of this.

Luna grabbed onto his wrist and tried to part him from his quill. Apparently he'd been so happy with his work that he'd been neglecting his girlfriend. Now he had another activity to keep him happy.