Chapter 2: Mysteries

July 31, 1963

Harald Potter was generally very appreciative of his shift at St. Mungo's being at fairly reasonable hours for a family man, although his old bones wished that the hours weren't so early. This morning, however, he was cursing his luck: he was the Chief Mediwizard in Charge of the 5-1 shift and was on-call this week for the night hours, while anything before then went to the head of the 1-10 shift. The hours in between had a skeleton staff with experienced Healers, but nobody in charge of the hospital. Only rarely did the Chief Mediwizard have to go in at night, or do anything more than take a Floo call on the weekend. Harald was never particularly thrilled to get a call in the middle of the night.

At 11:01 an Apprentice Mediwitch had realized she had too many babies in the ward, by one. And so, Harald had been woken up by the ringing alarm attached to his Floo, for when the hospital called. The Mediwitch had immediately gone to the Head of the floor, and a few minutes had been spent trying to straighten it out, before they had called him. Just moments after ending the Floo call Harald was dashing back to the room where he and his wife, Charisse, slept.

"Harald? What time is it? What's going on," the bleary woman asked.

Turning his eyes upon his wife, a mother of a young child, though already much older than her peers and in the first phase of lumbago, Harald gave a loving smile, before walking over and kissing her on the forehead. "Baby showed up mysteriously in the hospital—there's no reason of course. Right in the middle of the maternity ward and not a soul noticed. Nobody could get into the ward to drop off a baby unless they work there, chances are somebody would have seen. Not a lot of wizarding babies born a day you know…I have to go in and find out about this little girl. Quite a puzzle"

"Oh a baby! If only we could have another, though…I can't imagine another tyke like James." The woman hesitated, then asked, "Will you be back?" Charisse knew her husband well, and knew that he would not leave until the situation was cared for: a baby could not be left defenseless in the world.

"I'll try to make it for a quick breakfast, before going back in," the 68 year old man told his wife in a muffled voice, as he pulled on his robes.

"Do let me know will you?"

"Yes of course dear," the man intoned as he cast one last look upon his wife and hurried out of the bedroom, and toward the fireplace that was in the living room, just down the stairs.

At 11:20 at night on July 31st, a man climbed out of the green flames of the Floo into St. Mungo's hospital. The man was of average height, with messy black hair going gray, and tired brown eyes. Straightening himself up, he looked around, and immediately headed toward the first floor ward where he knew he would find the younger wizard who served as Head of the Floor.

"Ah, there you are Potter. This here is the mediwitch who noticed the extra baby in the ward. We've not been able to track down any missing baby within the hospital."

Mr. Potter nodded calmly, turning to look at the young witch, "Madame Spicer, I believe? Could you please take me to see the child?" The woman nodded, as Harald turned his attention to the other man, "It was good see you Jack, if you could meet me in my office in 15? I'd like to discuss this with you further."

The Head of the Floor, Jack Abbot, nodded. "I'll just check up on the Creature Induced Injuries real fast, fellow came in with a bad injury off of a bog-standard chicken. Why people try to get eggs from them I'll never know…"

As Abbot walked off into the ward, the young Mediwitch turned to her boss' boss. "This way if you please. I found the little girl well into my shift. I work swing from 8 pm to 5 am, and she's such a quiet thing, not a peep out of her for who knows how long, until I was feeding Roger Atkins, the little premature on the ward, and she let out a wail wanting a bottle too! Well naturally I looked around to see if a baby had somehow got put into a bassinet without a name attached, but no, all of the others were filled, and she was only wrapped up in a blanket as if she hadn't even gone through the measurements and been given an identification bracelet yet. We're really not sure how she got here," the woman exclaimed as she slipped into the room where the mysterious baby had shown up. Two other infants were in the room, one two weeks old and in for a flu, and Roger who had just been born on the morning of the 29th and needed monitoring for a couple days as he was a few weeks early.

Harald walked over and looked down into the bassinet, and felt unease stir within his chest. The little girl had downy black hair, and the pinkish skin of a newborn. She also reminded him of his own James when he had first been born, although even then he had been a rowdy little boy. "And you've no idea who could have brought her in?"

The women shook her head vigorously. "Oh no sir, you see the mediwitch on the last shift told me that it had been a really quiet night. Little Simone's father and big brother had been in, and left her that teddy bear, not that the poor dear even knows it, sick as she is. That was 5 pm, and afterwards she moved Simone back to the far corner of the room, so the two littles wouldn't get each other sick or disturb sleep. Nobody else came or went after, not or her shift or on mine."

"Do you think that she might have missed the baby having been there before your shift?"

"I'm not completely sure Mr. Potter. I should think it's not likely—we walk around the room enough, and babies need feeding often enough that I just can't imagine that little girl having been there that long without anybody knowing. No I feel sure that the little one can't have been here quite so early as that. She must have shown up on my watch…But I'd swear to you that I didn't see anybody come in!" The blonde mediwitch frowned, looking at the small girl. "I do feel bad that I didn't notice her earlier…didn't notice somebody just leave the poor thing here…Oh, I wonder how they did it.."

Harald Potter leaned over and clapped the woman gently on the shoulder. "Sounds just like magic, doesn't it? Don't worry, Madame Spicer, between Jack and I we'll get this sorted out. I think I'll check with Dumbledore—Hogwarts always knows when a witch or wizard is born, maybe the parents named the girl before leaving her here…though I do wonder how they got in."

The man looked down and saw the little girl yawn a little. With a small grin he reached down with a finger a gently tapped her chin, and the little girl closed her mouth and opened bright green eyes for just a second, before closing them, almost reproachfully. He chuckled, "Looks like a little Slytherin there, green eyes and already giving me a bad time," he joked. "Well, I'll leave her to your care for now Healer."

And with a nod, Harald Potter slipped out of the ward, and headed for his office, where he found Jack Abbot waiting inside. "Strangest thing, nurse is pretty sure nobody left the baby that she saw, yet the baby couldn't have already been there. And I have to say I'd agree—Healer on the last shift could hardly have not paid attention to a baby for that long, short of a Notice-Me-Not charm."

The other man agreed with him. "I've been thinking we ought to keep this quiet. Seems to me like if somebody left this child here they probably don't want to be found, and the child is better off getting care…"

"You might be right Jack, but I was thinking we'd check in with Dumbledore, see if he has a name for us…You know him better than I do, that's why I wanted you here."

Jack Abbot nodded. As a muggleborn wizard who had only graduated from Hogwarts a few years ago, Dumbledore had been his Headmaster but had taught Transfiguration in his first and second years before his predecessor had retired. "Probably a good plan. Now's as good a time as any—I swear that man never sleeps, I just hope he's at Hogwarts. I'm not real sure what he gets up to during the summer."

Luckily for the two men, Dumbledore was indeed in his office, a bright orange sleephat hanging over his red-and-gray hair. His eyes weren't twinkling quite as much as usual underneath his sickle-moon glasses, as he looked at the two heads sticking out of his fireplace. "Ah, Jack Abbot, Mr. Potter, what I can do for St. Mungo's this evening?"

Jack spoke up, "Sorry to bother you Albus, I know it's late. We just ran into something here that we were hoping you'd be able to help us with." Harald slipped in, "A Healer informs us that a baby showed up in the ward this evening, she's not quite sure when but she is sure that she didn't see anybody leave a child there, and there's no child we can figure it out to be. We were wondering if you wouldn't happen to know if Hogwarts knew…? I remember you knew right away when James was born that he was magic and would be accepted into Hogwarts…"

Dumbledore frowned slightly. "Most unusual. Let me just get that list…should be somewhere in that infernal book." The man turned his back to his twin-headed fire, and looked around. "I can never quite find it when I think I ought to need it…ah, nevermind," he said, as the book floated through the air to him. "It, at least, knows when I would like it and answers to my call on occasion."

Neither men commented at the man's phrases, knowing full well that he had, in fact, summoned the book. Flipping through pages, Dumbledore found the page for the class that would enter Hogwarts in 1974. "hmm… we have a Blue, a Fischer…ah here, July birthdays..an Atkins…no that's a young wizard….hmmm…" He snapped the book closed. "I do indeed have record of a little girl born today, but not so much as the last name is listed. That is rather unusual, as the book is charmed to tell lineage as per the last name of the child through blood detection charms. Perhaps I could tell more if I were to meet the child…?"

Harald and Jack exchanged glances. Blood detection charms hadn't worked, and the baby had seemingly been abandoned on the very day of her birth? No…somebody had gone to great lengths to remain unknown. Harald sighed, "It's rare but…witches sometimes choose not to keep their child…It happens every decade or so but, I've never known a case where the witch went to such lengths to hide her identity. Normally they just walk in and shove the baby into somebody's arms, crying a little. No, there's no point in trying to find the parents."

XXoXX

When a week later Charisse met her husband at the hospital at the end of his shift, and blood adopted the child nobody was surprised. The Potters had tried to start a family for years, having always wanted a large brood of children, but had never managed more than James. And here was a little girl needing a home, who had charmed Harald quite quickly when he went in to check on her in those first days.

The adoption ceremony was simple. Jack Abbot, as Healer who eventually had written out the birth certificate for the child, stood as witness. A dusty potion was pulled off of the shelf of the supply room, and a drop of blood from each parent added to it. Then the potion was carefully tipped down the baby girl's throat.

Jack Abbot, Dumbledore and Healer Spicer were among the few who knew that Charisse, who rarely left her home, had not given birth to the child. The fact would be on Ministry records, but those records were not public knowledge, and in fact few in the Ministry even bothered to look when a certificate of birth was sent in from St. Mungo's—they just looked at the last name, and put it into the correct Family Registry.

Charisse, an elderly woman of 56—old to be a new mother, but not unheard of in the Wizarding world, smiled tenderly down at the infant, as Jack and Harald wrote on the papers. "What did the two of you decide to name her," Jack asked, as he got to that portion of the form.

"Diara Emerald, our little green-eyed gift," the witch said with a smile.

And a few moments later the new parents and their witness had signed the form, and a pompous Ministry owl was collecting the form in an envelope and winging off with it. Jack clapped his hands together, "Well that's all done. Can't believe some witch just abandoned their baby like that, but you two will be great parents to her. How's little James going to take having a new sister?"

Harald growled, with a mildly annoyed look on his face, "He'll behave around her, or else I'll take away his toy broomstick!" With a sigh, toward the overly energetic behavior of his son, Harald continued, "When we asked him if he'd like a baby sister he didn't say a whole lot, but he didn't say no. And well, he's three; he may not even remember that she's adopted. He did ask if he could name her Finn, after his favorite Quidditch player."

The adults laughed together, and Charisse Potter invited Abbot over for dinner one night soon. And life went on. For a time the family forgot to wonder who Diara's birth parents were. James and Diara got along well, him not being able to deal with it when she cried encouraging him to be on his best behavior for his little sister. The two children were doted upon.

Charisse and Harald were forced to renew their curiosity as to the parentage of their youngest child when she learned how to speak however. There was no doubt about it: Diara was a distinctly odd child.