CHAPTER 2: THE SAMPSONS

Harry was still in far too much pain the next morning to bother fighting as the CPS agent signed him out ("Have a nice day, Ms. Colton!"), handed him a pile of clean, new clothes ("You didn't think those rags you had on were leaving with you, did you? No, no, Don and Anne are getting you a whole new wardrobe…") and somehow managed to push, pull and drag him into her car.

"So, Harry," Ms. Colton said easily as she zipped down another side street, "I know that this must all be very new for you. The Sampsons are very used to, ah, difficult cases, and they'll be working very hard to help you adjust, but I expect you to be doing your part as well."

'Yeah, I'll be doing my part,' Harry thought sarcastically to himself, glaring out the window, 'to get away from there. Get back to school, where I belong.'


"Don, Anne, this is Harry," Ms. Colton said to the older couple once inside the house. "Harry, this is Don and Anne Sampson."

Harry gave them a cursory nod in greeting, feeling a little like Snape.

"Now, I'll drop by again in a fortnight to see how it went," Ms. Colton continued cheerily. "I expect you'll have started school by that point, too, and I'll want to hear all about it."

With that, she left, leaving Harry standing alone in front of the older couple, his one free hand shoved into the pockets of his sweatshirt. It was so weird, to be wearing clothes that actually fit. He had to fight to keep himself from squirming, used to the vast amount of space he usually had in his hand-me-downs from Dudley and his school robes.

"Well, come on, then," Don finally said. "We'll show you your bedroom, and then we'll head out to the mall. Anne is itching to buy you new clothes. She's a shop-a-holic," he added confidentially to Harry, rolling his eyes.

"I've never had to buy teenage boys' clothes before, I'm rather looking forward to it," Anne said cheerfully.

"Fine," Harry muttered, though inside he was screaming for joy. A mall? Perfect! Plenty of people, crowds galore – he could slip away and nobody would be any the wiser. He could find a deserted alley nearby, call up the Knight Bus (didn't know how he was going to do that without a wand, though)… hopefully they'd take an honor payment… go to Diagon Alley, find the Weasleys from there. Maybe somehow he could get his stuff from Privet Drive – or would they have burnt it all already, eager to get all trace of him out of their lives?

In his mind's eye, he saw Uncle Vernon feeding his most prized possessions to a fire. His wand. His beloved Firebolt – the national-standard broom that probably cost a small fortune and his very first present from Sirius. His Invisibility Cloak – one of the only things he had that remained of his father, and not an easy item to come across either. The Marauders' Map – the map of Hogwarts that his father, his godfather and their friends had created in their teenage years and that he had managed to retrieve from the imposter Moody in June. His picture album…

At the thought of the only pictures he had of his parents going up in flames, Harry's insides burned with rage. If the Dursleys dared even touch that, they would pay, and if he wound up in Azkaban because of it, he didn't care.


As it turned out, 'the mall' was a tiny little strip mall nearby, nearly empty, with no alleys, no bus stops. Just wide open spaces. Great, not even a cranny to hide in. There went that escape plan. Don and Anne had evidently been warned that he was a flight risk.

So Harry grudgingly dragged himself along behind Don and Anne, who was chatting with some of the young shop workers as though she had known them all her life. It was a very long four hours before she had poked and prodded Harry into trying the clothes, having finally engaged the help of one chipper teenage clerk to find the current 'in' fashions since Harry refused to give an opinion. "Whatever," he muttered, free hand shoved in his pocket.

"Make sure you go with greens and browns, they'll really bring out his eyes," the girl – Melody! :-), her nametag said – said to Anne as she passed more clothes to the woman for inspection. "Reds and golds will contrast nicely with his hair, not to mention warm up his skin tone a bit."

Now that, Harry was slightly more content with, as they were his house colours.

"I'd stay away from cool colours – whites, blues, silvers. They'll just make him look like a Popsicle. A few blacks, but not too much, he's got enough black in his hair and it'll pale him up horribly. Any questions?" she finished. She had been eyeing Harry with great interest ever since they had walked in the shop, and he was beginning to resent it – he wasn't a museum artifact, after all! Just because he had about as many casts and bandages on him as a mummy… no reason to stare at him. The doctors had put a metal rod in his broken leg, in his broken arm (which was still in a sling; he was supposed to be using a walking stick to alleviate pressure on his metal-rodded leg, but what did they think he was going to hold the stupid thing with, his crushed hand?), so he'd been slowly limping around all day.

"What about outerwear? Jackets?" Anne asked, and Melody's eyes lit up.

Don stifled a groan and Harry resigned himself to another three hours of trying on things he really had no interest in.

"All the boys are wearing leather jackets now, it's all the rage. Very masculine, you see, makes them look and feel tough," Melody chattered away.


A leather-encased arm slammed him against the floor, Dudley's formidable weight cutting off both his air and his circulation as he held him down with a knee in his chest. Struggling, Harry tried to fight back, but with his extremities losing their supply of blood, it was a futile task.


"This one's not too expensive, looks quite nice. I've seen a lot of the boys in my secondary wearing this lately…"

"No," Harry spoke up suddenly, the first real opinion he'd offered yet on this stupid trip. Startled, Don and Anne both turned to look at him, while Melody looked crestfallen at the rejection of one of her suggestions. Feeling a little stared-at, he mumbled, "Don't like leather," and flushed, fixing his gaze at the floor.

"All right, then," Melody said uneasily. Then she seemed to shrug it off and continued in the next row, "Then a good second would be the pressed wool, they're still quite fashionable, but it's only a select few boys who will be caught dead in it, pressed wool's really a girl's material nowadays, but…"


Harry stared blankly out the window at the quiet suburban street. A few teenage boys were playing broomball out in the street, a few little girls were skipping rope down at the end of the block, but other than that, there really was no activity.

This was ridiculous. Why didn't anybody notice he was gone from Privet Drive yet?

Because Dumbledore keeps you locked up all the time, you stupid boy, on summers!, the embittered, sullen teenager in him snapped. Nobody ever sees you until either they see fit to get you or you take off.

Maybe they HAVE noticed I'm missing, the hopeful, naïve teenager in him countered. Maybe they ARE looking for me – didn't Hermione say that we'd be seeing each other quite soon in my birthday card last week? But I'm not even in Surrey anymore, how will they be able to find me? Will they think to try the hospitals?

You stupid boy!, the embittered Harry growled again. You think they CARE about what happens to you? Where were they when the Dementors were attacking you and Dudley on Wisteria Walk, huh? Where were they when Uncle Vernon and Dudley were beating you to death? WHERE WERE THEY THEN?! Face it, Harry Potter, you're alone. You've always been alone. You're always going to be alone. Not even Sirius is coming this time.

But Sirius has always come, the naïve Harry persisted. Sirius has never let me down before. Didn't he come back into England last year to be near me when I was freaking out about the Triwizard and my scar pain? Didn't he come back into Hogwarts, risking his own life, to stay with me after the third Triwizard task? Didn't he stay right there the whole night? Hasn't he been writing me all summer, reassuring me that I won't be forgotten?

So where is Sirius now, then, idiot child?, Embittered Harry demanded angrily. Why are you here and not with him? Answer THAT if you can!

Harry bit his lip, wincing as he pressed down on the healing split. Where was Sirius? If he'd ever needed his godfather, now was the time. He didn't want to listen to the two Harrys arguing anymore.


The beginning of the school term was quickly approaching, and Harry panicked every time he thought about it. He had missed his disciplinary hearing, he was as good as expelled from Hogwarts now. He was supposed to be starting second year secondary next week, at the local public high school, Sir Arthur of Trebald Secondary, and his insides froze whenever the thought that he was at least four years behind his peers struck him.

Not to mention that he hadn't been that strong a student in primary either – he probably should've repeated first form once or twice, just because of his abominable maths. The teachers simply kept giving him a pass grade and moving him along. By third form, he was completely bewildered by everything except language arts and really, who could be bewildered by that?

So he was still at a lower primary level, and he was supposed to just waltz into second year secondary courses in a week? Harry contemplated every possible way to get out of it, and none seemed to be viable. He seriously considered throwing himself off a bridge, but then decided that it was maybe too permanent a solution to the temporary problem.

On the night before the beginning of term, they were eating dinner when Anne asked, "So, Harry, are you nervous about tomorrow?"

"Hmph," Harry replied neutrally; he was still upset at missing his disciplinary hearing – had tried to throw a few things around his bedroom when he had realized that, but discovered that the only throwable things were bolted down. Evidently he wasn't the first angry foster child to have tried to throw things in the Sampson house.

"I know it'll be a trial," Anne continued, seeming not to hear Harry's lack of enthusiasm. "After all, the other students have already known each other for at least a year. But you'll settle into the routine quickly enough, and you'll make friends sooner than you might believe."

"Hmph."

"Can I get a real response, please, Harry, not a grunted syllable?"

"Whatever," Harry muttered, getting up from his untouched dinner and limping out.


This school was about ten times bigger than even Hogwarts, which was a formidable size itself. And he had maths first, too. Great. This day was starting off wonderfully.

The only good part, Harry mused as he resisted the urge to kick his locker door in frustration at the impossible spin-dial lock (really, how did they expect him to get that worked out with both hands incapacitated?), was that nobody really was staring at him here. He was just another face in the crowds of faces. A somewhat mangled face, true, but a face nonetheless.

"Oh, you!" came a somewhat familiar chirpy voice from beside him. He turned to see the Melody girl from the clothing shop. Internally, he groaned. She was going to be his Muggle Colin and Dennis Creevey, he could already tell. "Do you need some help? Of course you do, what am I saying, you can't use your hands, can you? Of course you can't." She took his combination from him and deftly spun the lock right, left, right again and opened it. "I'm Melody Nighthammer, by the way. If I'm talking too much, let me know. My mother says I talk too much, but I find it just so easy to do…"

"Hmph." Harry tuned her out and managed, with a little difficulty, to hoist his schoolbag back onto his shoulder, then somehow succeeded in closing the locker she had just finished opening and went limping off towards maths. Might as well just take everything with him, there was no telling if somebody would help him out later on.

Room 341. Where was 341? Harry passed Room 134, 136, 138, and then realized he was at the end of the hallway. Maybe the first number indicated the floor? Third floor classroom?

Harry cast a doubtful glance at the crowded, steep, narrow stairwell. No way was he getting up that, not with his stupid legs. Oh, why was he even bothering to be here? He ought to just leave right now. If he started towards the entrance now, he might actually make it off school property by 3:30.

"Mr. James, I presume?" came a voice from behind him. Harry bit back the urge to yell and whirled around, to see an impressive middle-aged man dressed in an impeccable suit. Likely the headmaster. He was accompanied by a boy about Harry's age, who seemed to be sizing him up. He reminded him of a cross between Neville and Malfoy: rather plump, but with a sneering, confident face that told Harry that he was obviously one of the 'in' students here.

"Yessir," Harry replied in a sheepish mumble once he had recollected his nerves and remembered that he had given his name as Harry James, not Harry Potter.

"Mr. Evanston, I'm the principal here at Sir Arthur. This is Anthony Artecas, he's going to be helping you out for the first few weeks. Your foster parents said you're supposed to have the sling and cast taken away in three weeks?"

"Yeah," Harry said. He nodded a greeting in Anthony's general direction.

"Now, Mr. Artecas, I believe you two young men are due in maths," Evanston said, leaving the two boys alone.

"So you got a given name, James?" Anthony asked abruptly. "C'mon, we're supposed to use the lift, and it's at the clear other end of the bleeding school. And I'm not making myself late to classes because of you. I'm only doing this because it's part of my duties as a student council member to help out new students."

Yep. Definitely a Muggle Malfoy. Harry glowered at him. "Harry," he finally said coolly, "And you don't have to hang around, I'm perfectly capable of getting my own self to a class."

"Fine," Anthony replied in an equally cool tone, and he immediately tore off towards the stairs again.


Harry somehow managed to work his way through the crowds (by imagining them all as Chasers, Beaters and Bludgers he had to avoid to catch the Quidditch-Cup-winning Snitch, which was maths class). He got inside and collapsed in relief into the nearest chair, dropping his schoolbag to the floor. This was not going to be fun.

The teacher walked in. It was an older woman, carrying a huge stack of books and papers. Another student staggered in behind her, carrying another huge stack of books. "Good morning, and welcome to Mathematical Concepts I," she said briskly. "Some of you may have had me for Introduction to Mathematical Concepts last year, but for those who didn't, I am Ms. Arnette. Now, when I call your name, please raise your hand so I can see where you are. Janet Adams. Olivia Arnold. Anthony Artecas. Nathan Azariah. Aylmer Barnabas. Gregory Beechum…"

Harry started to doze off after Gregory Beechum and the list slowly dwindled through the Bs, Cs, Ds… there must've been about fifty students in this class, and he was pretty darn close to the end of the alphabet.

"Harry James," she called, looking around. "Harry James, present?"

Harry jumped back to attention. "Yes, ma'am," he replied.

"Hand, please, Mr. James, my hearing's rather finicky."

Harry grumbled under his breath. His shoulder had been throbbing all day from an infection that had set in his crushed hand and was spreading through his arm. Anne was shoving horse-pill-sized antibiotics down his throat three times a day in an effort to ward off the infection. He couldn't move it at all. "I'm sorry, ma'am, I can't," he said.

"Can't?" she demanded. "Why can't you?"

"He seems to have broken both of his arms, Ms. Arnette," came the call of a girl behind him. "He's right beside Olivia, ma'am."

"Very well, thank you, Natalie. Edwina Jenson…" Ms. Arnette continued down the list, and when she'd finally finished, she set it aside, told two students to start distributing textbooks and announced, "We'll begin today with some revision. I'm going to write some questions common to last year's assignments and you will take turns coming up to answer the question."

Harry's heart started pounding as he read the questions being written. A bunch of numbers and letters strung together, with all those weird symbols? Was that even maths? Where was Hermione when you needed her – doubtlessly Hermione would know the answer.

"Ms. Randall, Ms. Wallace and Mr. James, please answer the first three questions."

Great. A wonderful day. "Ma'am," Harry called, a hint of desperation in his voice. "Ma'am, I have a thrice-broken arm in a sling and a crushed hand. I can't write for weeks."

"I can write for him, ma'am," came the offer from Natalie behind him. Stupid girl… Harry mentally plotted all the curses he could fling at her if he had his wand as Ms. Arnette said what a wonderful idea that was.

"Well, you tell me the steps, and I'll transcribe them for you," Natalie said cheerfully as she got up and waited for him to do the same. "You'll have to come up with me, you know, I'm not doing the calculations for you."

Harry flushed and concentrated on counting the number of threads coming loose in the bandages on his crushed hand. "I… don't know how," he muttered softly.

"What are you talking about?" Natalie asked with a laugh. "We learnt that ages ago, second year of grammar school, I believe," she continued, citing the small three-form school that transitioned most pupils from primary to secondary. "Everybody knows how to do that. You got the easiest question."

"I… don't know how," Harry repeated, feeling his cheeks burn as Natalie stared at him and he heard the undercurrent of whispers begin to make their way across the classroom.

"Oh. Okay," Natalie said in confusion as she slowly sat back down, still sounding like she was expecting him to jump up and tell her it was all a joke, of course he knew how to do the problem.

"Mr. James, I don't see your work!" Ms. Arnette called impatiently.

Wishing he could sink right through the floor, Harry repeated, a little louder, "I don't know how."

Ms. Arnette stood up and strode over. "Mr. James, you learnt this three years ago. All Introduction to Mathematical Concepts teachers spent a good month reviewing it last year. You wouldn't be in this class if you didn't know how to do it. Now go answer the question."

"I don't know how," Harry repeated, now slightly irritated – didn't she think he was embarrassed enough by this? Obviously this was quite a simple question for the Muggles. But he had maybe barely scraped a pass in second-form maths, maybe, and he had never learnt anything more than that. Numbers truly confused him.

"Very well," Ms. Arnette snapped. "Mr. Barnabas, go answer the question. Mr. James, stay behind after class."


Harry purposely avoided looking at any of the students who whispered to each other and stared at him on their way out the door once class had ended. Once the room was empty, Ms. Arnette said sternly, "Now would you like to explain why you refused to answer a simple question?"

"Because I didn't know how to answer it," Harry said.

"You're supposed to try as best you can, Mr. James," Ms. Arnette said. "Do as much as you can. You could've easily have done the first two or three steps."

Harry shook his head. "Ma'am, I couldn't do any of it. I'm absolute rubbish in anything with numbers, I always have been. Listen, I've got to try and get down to the first floor in five minutes, d'you think I could go?"

"Stay here, I'll excuse your absence later," Ms. Arnette said fiercely, glowering at him. "Couldn't do any of it, you said?" she said skeptically, as she pulled out another set of papers that looked like a test of some sort.

Harry shook his head. Then he freaked out again as she set down a test and looked at him. Merlin, she was going to test him.


It barely took five minutes and three questions before Harry was absolutely baffled. "I don't know," he kept repeating, growing more and more desperate each time. "I don't know."

Finally, Ms. Arnette slammed down the test paper in frustration. Smashing her fist into a button, she snapped, "Get Rhoda Staresse up here right now!"

Awkward silence filled the room, while Ms. Arnette occasionally muttered things like 'outrage' and 'definite lack of organization' under her breath. Barely ten minutes later, a woman appeared at the door. "You shouted, Evelyn?" she asked mildly. "Ah, yes, you must be Harry, right? The Sampsons' new foster boy?"

"I want to know," Ms. Arnette spit out ferociously, "what this boy is doing in my class."

"Because he's supposed to be?" Ms. Staresse replied uncertainly.

"No! No, no, you dim-witted woman! This boy," she stabbed a finger at Harry for emphasis as he sunk lower into his chair again, face flushing, "can't even get past first-form mathematical questions!" She paused, took a breath and continued. "I don't have time to be privately tutoring a single student in something he should've been learning years ago! I want him out of my class, I will not have my grade point average lowered drastically because somebody neglected to teach him mathematics in primary school!"


After that, the day just went downhill. History and Chemistry were just as disastrous as Maths, his History teacher exploding at this Rhoda Staresse as well about how the boy couldn't tell you a single solitary thing about any historical event or figure in the last three hundred years, not even the bleeding Prime Minister, and his Chemistry teacher actually booted him out of class because he didn't have a clue what the table of elements was. Rhoda Staresse hurried into the class shortly thereafter, looking frenzied and tired.

Lunch came and went, and physical education was shaping up to be mildly better, because he was benched until all of his injuries healed. But when the teacher asked if he'd ever played rugby or polo and Harry answered no, thinking longingly of the Quidditch he was missing, the physical education teacher, too, called in Rhoda Staresse and demanded to know what hole this boy had come crawling out from. English Composition was wrecked when he had to admit, mumbling, that he didn't have a clue what the proper format of composition writing was. Rhoda Staresse, once again, appeared in the class and was chewed out by the irate English teacher.


Harry slouched low into his seat, confined to the administrative offices to wait for Don and Anne to show up. Rhoda Staresse seemed to be the school social worker, and she wanted them here to 'discuss the situation'.

"So, Harry," Rhoda said kindly as she sat down next to him. "I guess your first day of school wasn't the greatest."

"I've had better days," Harry muttered.

"I don't doubt that you have," Rhoda laughed. Then she sobered. "I am sincerely sorry to have had you go through a hell of a day like this. I know it likely didn't do anything for your ego."

Harry chose to ignore that comment (he wasn't sure his ego was ever going to recover) and looked up again only when the door opened, and Don and Anne walked in, worry on their faces. He pulled away when Anne made a move as if to hug him, and focused his attention on his sneakers.

He tried not to listen to the conversation going on right beside him. He was tired of people talking about him as though he weren't there.


"Harry," Anne said as she held the car door open for Harry to get in.

"Hmm," Harry replied indifferently.

"Why didn't you say anything to us beforehand?" she asked. "We could've made special arrangements. We could've saved you all of that. Now you have to try and get through this."

"Hmm," Harry said.

"Harry, I'd appreciate the discontinuance of these monosyllabic grunts," Don said tersely.

"Fine."

Anne watched him from the front seat, before she said softly, "You thought somebody was coming for you, didn't you? You didn't expect to be with us long enough to start school."

"Whatever," Harry muttered, looking out the window.

"Harry," Don sighed, "They don't care about you after you leave."

"Don, you have all the tact of an anvil on the head," Anne reprimanded.

"God, Harry, they beat you half to death! Why do you even want to go back?" Don continued, ignoring his wife's admonishment.

"Because that's where I belong," Harry replied almost inaudibly, not bothering to correct his foster father on the situation. Not like anybody listened any way.


Harry's head swam with confusion as he tried to make heads or tails out of his maths assignment. He had spent the last eight hours straight, without even breaking for supper, trying to do the first question.

Finally, in frustration, Harry slammed the textbook shut and threw it at the wall. The book stopped in mid-air, and the air let out a wounded cry, letting the textbook fall to the floor with a clatter.

"What?" Harry said, more to himself than to the empty room.

The door swung open and Don looked in, rather crossly. "Harry, would you stop throwing things? It's 1 in the bleeding morning! Go to bed." He closed the door again, and Harry glared at the door and picked up his history textbook to throw, just to spite him. He was in a foul mood, and he wasn't afraid to let them know it.

"Don't you dare throw that," said the air, and Harry, startled, dropped the book onto the bed. From out of nowhere, Remus Lupin appeared, folding up an Invisibility Cloak and rubbing his head. He sent Harry a disgusted look. "Did you have to throw it so hard?"

Harry couldn't stop a laugh from escaping. "What are you doing here?" he asked, the first smile in weeks appearing.

"Rescuing you, what else?" Lupin said dryly. "Although I think after that attack, I might leave you here. Then again, Sirius will probably rip my head from my shoulders with his bare hands if I don't come back with you. He was going to come himself, but I managed to convince him he wasn't much use to you captured."

"I didn't know you were there," Harry protested. "Please get me out of here?"

"Yeah, come on." Lupin cast a doubtful glance at the door. They were on the second floor, and he had seen how hard it was for Harry to make it up or down the stairs. They'd get caught for sure. "Couldn't possibly get out the window, eh?" he asked hopefully.

Harry shook his head. "Tried that my first night here. Window's nailed shut. Shatterproof glass, and bars in front of all the windows in the house. Everything's nailed down. I'm not the first angry teenage boy in here."

Lupin laughed, then sobered. "I guess we'll have to chance the stairs, then."

"You can't just… crack me out of here or something?" Harry asked in panic. "You know, like Apparition?"

"You don't have your license," Lupin replied, "and the crack can't be explained by anything inside the house. Otherwise I would just cart you along with me. As it is, we can do that once we're out of the house." He sighed and eyed the door doubtfully again. "It's the getting out of the house that's worrying me."

"Stupid leg," Harry muttered, glowering at his metal-rodded leg. "I hate this."

"Merlin, what did they do to you?" Lupin asked softly.

"You think this is bad, you should've seen me a fortnight ago," Harry said. "Tempers ran a bit high in Privet Drive," he added for an explanation.

Lupin's face paled with shock. "Your uncle did this to you?"

"Well, it was Uncle Vernon and Dudley," Harry corrected mildly, face darkening. "Dudley's a district champion boxer, he gave me most of the major injuries. I wouldn't leave." When Lupin frowned at him, he continued, "I had to explain what'd happened to Dudley, didn't I? Stupid great oaf, all shaky and sick from the Dementors… Uncle Vernon told me to get out, but as I'd just gotten two owls which both ordered me to leave under no conditions… well, things got nasty. Knocked me out, and I was wandless and in a ditch outside of town when I came to." He sighed. "Some good Samaritan picked me up and dragged me into the hospital. The Muggles think I was part of some weird cult out there."

"Why's that?" Lupin asked.

"Because I don't exist in the Muggle world. And apparently I've been talking in my sleep, and it sounded very cult-like to them," Harry said. "Please, can we go? I've had one of the most horrible days of my life, I want be back somewhere where I know what's going on."

"Yeah, all right," Lupin agreed, ruffling the teen's hair in mild affection. "C'mon. We've got all your things back at… where we're going."

"Everything?" Harry asked immediately.

"Absolutely everything," Lupin confirmed. "Your wand, your Firebolt, your album. I've got your Cloak here with me, Fred and George took the Map back to Hogwarts with them."

Hogwarts. He was expelled. "What about school?" Harry asked softly. "I missed my hearing."

Lupin's face darkened and he sighed. "Let's worry about that later, Harry. Concentrate on getting out of here first." Carefully, he eased the door open and gestured for Harry to go. Harry tried to make it out with minimal sound, but couldn't avoid the sound of his limp. Step, thump. Step, thump. Curse hardwood floors, it'd be easier to mask on carpet. Groaning under his breath, and casting an apologetic glance at Lupin, who shrugged with a 'well, what can we do?' look, Harry cautiously started to make his way down the stairs, trying to keep himself balanced by hugging the wall and taking it one step at a time – it might look ridiculous, but it was a little easier than just walking down.

Five more steps to go… four more… three –

Harry lost his footing. Lupin managed to grab his arm – unfortunately, the infected one that stung to be touched, let alone grabbed – before he fell all the way, Harry letting loose an expletive in pain and earning himself a stern 'watch your mouth' look from Lupin. "Go!" he hissed at Lupin when he heard the sounds of Don and Anne waking. Lupin hesitated. "Tell Sirius it was my fault, not yours. Go!" Harry added, steadying himself on the banister.

Lupin hesitated only another second. "Hang in there, Harry," he said softly. "We'll get you out somehow." Then he Disapparated with a crack. Harry nearly lost his footing again as Don appeared at the head of the stairs.

"Harry!"


True to Remus' prediction, when he arrived back at the Order of the Phoenix headquarters, Sirius was pacing around the entrance hall anxiously, waiting for him to get back.

"Where's Harry?" he asked again.

Remus sighed. "We ran into a few difficulties. I had to leave him where he was."

"What?!" Sirius roared.

"Sirius, calm down," Remus snapped.

"Calm down?!" Sirius snapped back. "Calm down?! Oh, shut up, you old hag," he added angrily to his mother's portrait screaming down the hall. "Remus, I was counting on you!"

"Sirius," Remus said tightly, "we know where he is. He's… safe, I suppose, for the moment. It's just going to take a little more planning."

"How hard can it be?" Sirius snarled. "Merlin, Remus, you're supposed to be the smart one!"

Remus sighed. This was the part he'd been dreading. Sirius was going to go ballistic. "Sirius, he's hurt."

Sirius stopped dead in his ranting. "What?"

"Apparently, 'things got nasty' at his aunt and uncle's house in August…"

Sirius blanched. "How badly is he hurt?" he asked weakly.

"Pretty badly. Muggles patched him up, but he's very unsteady on his feet. Lost his balance on the stairs while we were trying to get out and woke up the Muggles that have him. It was either let them get both of us or leave him there and go back again."

"What happened to him?" Sirius asked. "In August?"

Remus sighed. "From what I can gather from the little he told me, Dementors attacked his cousin. That was likely why he had the Patronus Charm done. That would line up with Arabella and Mundungus' account. When he and his cousin got home, he had to try and explain what Dementors were doing in Little Whinging and what had happened. I guess that was about the time everybody started owling him. Any way, his uncle told him to get out and Harry told him he wasn't leaving… as he put it, 'things got nasty.' He said he got knocked out, woke up somewhere outside of town and wandless."

"So who are these Muggles that got him now?" Siruis demanded.

"Well, that seems to be rather vague," Remus admitted. "I don't quite understand the situation. As far as I know, some random Muggle found Harry and brought him into one of their hospitals. They seem to think he was part of a 'cult', whatever that is. Do you happen to know what a 'cult' is?"

"Nope, haven't the faintest," Sirius replied, eyes smoldering with rage. "I'll kill Dursley," he growled, hands clenching into fists. "I swear, I'll strangle him with my own hands…"

"Sirius, you will do no such thing," Remus said sharply. "You're doing Harry no good by getting yourself executed. Now, listen. I'm going to go back tomorrow. Daytime. He's at school, and the place must have at least five or six thousand students that are all coming and going. Nobody'll notice if he leaves. I'm going to have to take him to the Burrow first, have Molly try and fix the horrible Muggle patch-ups, but then I'm bringing him straight here, all right?" He fixed a stern look at Sirius. "Stay here. Am I clear?"

"Yes, Mother," Sirius muttered, glowering at him.


"What?" Harry exclaimed in panic. "No!"

"Harry, it's obviously not working for you here," Ms. Colton said gently. "After yesterday, both Don and Anne, and myself as well, think maybe it's best you change homes. Now go on, get your clothes packed. Don't worry about your schoolbooks, you'll be starting at a new school. And this time, we'll make sure we don't throw you in over your head."

"But…" Harry started to protest.

"Go on, Harry," Anne said quietly. "Some families just don't work out. Maybe you'll be better off with the Dennisons."

How was Lupin supposed to get him out again if he moved?