At the 4 Privet Drive kitchen sink, Harry Potter stood with his hands in the hot, soapy water, running the tattered sponge in his right hand over the chef's knife he held in his left. His hands worked seemingly on their own to remove the leftover bits of food in a methodical almost thoughtless manner, while his eyes stared unseeingly at the ugly pink flowered tile in front of him. His body might have been in Little Whinging, but his mind was hundreds of kilometers away in the Little Hangleton graveyard.

Kill the spare!

A mental image of Cedric's lifeless face flashed before Harry's eyes. Harry could see every detail, down to Cedric's open gray eyes, expressionless and blank, and his half-open mouth, slightly surprised, as if he had also been off guard by Pettigrew. Harry's hands sped up, haphazardly sliding the sponge faster along the knife's edge.

Bow to death, Harry… I said bow.

Weeks after that horrible night, and far from the graveyard, Harry felt the same unnerving curvature in his spine, as if the evil wizard's hands were physically manipulating him like a doll.

He was going to die like Cedric. He was going to die and there was nothing he could do about it…

Sudden, searing pain in the middle of Harry's right palm pulled him out of his memories and back into his aunt and uncle's kitchen.

"Shit!"

He flung the knife into the sink to grab the tea towel off the counter. It hit the partially filled basin with a splash, sending a spray of dirty dishwasher onto his now-bleeding a few slow breaths, he bandaged the wound with the towel and pulled it snugly to help stop the bleeding, muttering "Fuck!" under his breath at the fire that ran from his hand up to his elbow.

"Boy!" His uncle's furious voice echoed from the sitting room where the family — everyone except for Harry — sat watching their evening television show. "What's all that racket in there?!"

'Racket'... Sure.

"It's, n-nothing, Uncle Vernon." Harry looked down at his wounded palm, face twisted in concern. "Just dropped a knife."

"Well, Boy, finish up, then!" Harry had no doubt that his uncle hadn't even bothered to turn his head in Harry's direction as he made his demand. "And do it quietly, or we'll lock you up straight away after dinner."

Harry rolled his eyes at the empty threat. Uncle Vernon liked to believe he was doing Harry a favor by not sending him to his room immediately after dinner, but they both knew how much Aunt Petunia hated cleaning up the dinner dishes. Therefore, realistically and regardless of what Uncle Vernon said, Harry would do the dishes every single night until he left; even if he would actually prefer to be locked in his room instead.

With his teeth clenched tight, Harry cautiously raised the edge of the towel to evaluate the damage. The blood had mostly stopped, and a quick wiggle of his fingers assured him it would not slow him down significantly. He gently re-wrapped the towel around his hand and used his good hand to retrieve the sponge — now cut in half — and knife from the sink. Since the knife had fallen into the dirty dishwater, Harry gave it a light pat down with the sponge and then deeming it clean enough, placed it onto the drying rack and proceeded to clean Dudley's plate; identifiable by the large globs of ketchup smeared across the entire surface.

"Disgusting," Harry complained to the empty room.

To make the situation more disgusting, Dudley had a habit of leaving his plate on the counter, allowing the ketchup to dry and stick so bad that not even the sponge could dislodge it and Harry had to use his nail to loosen it. He assumed Dudley did it on purpose, knowing that Harry wouldn't get gloves and would have to scrape it off. Not that confronting his cousin on it would do a damn thing to stop it.

Just as Harry was about to finish rinsing off the last of the dried ketchup, a tremor shot up his arm — remnants of the Cruciatus curse and a physical reminder of the terrifying events he had escaped, besides the lingering memories of them. As Harry struggled to hold on to the plate, the uncontrollable shaking caused him to lose his grip, and the plate fell to the floor. Holding his breath, Harry prayed to God and Merlin that Aunt Petunia didn't hear it shattering on the tile floor.

It seemed tonight was not his night.

"Potter!" His aunt's shrill voice became louder as she reached the kitchen. "What the devil is going on in–"

Harry slowly turned around, coming face-to-face with an angry Aunt Petunia. Between her pursed lips and her fists so firmly planted on her hip she probably had bruises, Harry was sure she was about to hand down a summer's worth of punishments for his inconsideration during their precious "family time". But the punishment never came because almost as soon as Harry saw, her eyes went wide; as if she was actually concerned about him. Which was completely ridiculous because Aunt Petunia never cared about him. Never. Not once. Not when he twisted his ankle running from Dudley and Pierce. Not when the creeper followed him home from the park when he was seven, asking if his name was Harry Potter. And not even when he sat up sick with a fever so high he thought he was hearing the spider in the corner of his closet whispering to him.

So why now?

He followed her gaze to the floor and found his answer: juggling the plate had the fresh cut, resulting in a rather impressive steady flow of dripping blood all over the floor, creating a stark contrast of vibrant red against the bright white shards of the ceramic plate.

"I… uh…" Harry stuttered, unsure how to explain both the cut and the broken plate.

Thankfully, he didn't need an explanation.

"Grab a towel and go get cleaned up," she curtly instructed, flinging her outstretched finger directly towards the stairs. "There are bandages in the medicine cupboard you can use."

Harry hesitated. Was this some kind of trick? Didn't she expect him to clean up the mess first?

As if understanding Harry's hesitation, Aunt Petunia impatiently shook her still outstretched hand again. Harry half-covered the dishwasher and blood-soaked towels with a second one quickly, and darted out of the kitchen, taking care to avoid stepping his bare feet on the bits of broken plate scattered around. He didn't really need to add a cut-up foot to his list of injuries for the night.

He cleared the sitting room with no movement out of Uncle Vernon or Dudley, then rushed up the stairs to the bathroom he shared with Dudley; slamming the door and locking it behind him. He wouldn't have much time before Dudley's show ended, so he made fast work of finding the box of small bandages and antibiotic cream. He'd be lucky if two bandages covered the width of his palm, but figured it only had to get him by for a day or two until his magic helped heal it and the antibiotic cream would do most of the work, anyway.

While nervously peeling back the layers of towels, Harry bit his bottom lip more with each pass. The cut was deeper than he initially realized, and an annoying voice inside his thoughts — one that sounded suspiciously like Hermione — wondered whether it needed stitches. Of course, that was easy for Hermione to say. Her parents would have taken one look at her and whisked her off to the hospital. It went for Ron too. Mrs. Weasley could heal Ron up on the spot with either a spell or potion; both of which Madam Pomfrey had used on Harry's many Quidditch injuries. Here, Harry had just been happy that Aunt Petunia didn't make him finish the dishes first, so asking to get the cut looked at was not even a remote possibility; something his friends couldn't understand.

In the end, Harry compromised and wrapped it with a roll of old gauze he found lying in the cupboard instead of trying to get the two small finger bandages to cover his entire palm. He hurried through the rest of his nighttime routine, more than ready to put the impossibly long day behind him. At the end of each day, he reminded himself that he was one day closer to returning to Hogwarts, and one day closer to seeing his friends. He just had to take the summer one rough day at a time.

A soft clunk from the wall behind him, the one shared with his bedroom, made him pause. Who was inside his bedroom? The first two summers after Hogwarts, he'd caught Dudley rummaging through it, looking for any of Harry's stuff to destroy, but stopped after failing to find the loose floorboard. Apparently, it wasn't much fun when your victim had nothing worth stealing or breaking.

Harry jumped at the sound of another thud. Instinctively, his hand reached for his wand… the wand he kept stored in his bedroom… the same room his cousin may, or may not, be searching through. Sneaking out of the bathroom — avoiding the well-known creaking floorboards — Harry wrapped a fresh towel around his injured hand in case needed to protect himself from Dudley's fist. The downstairs TV was blaring some commercial for the latest electronics, and as soon as Harry heard Dudley's whiny voice demanding the object, his blood ran cold.

If Dudley isn't in my room, then who is?

As Harry made his way down the corridor to his door, he noticed nothing looked out of place. The door was securely closed, and the locks were still folded in place, a habit he'd developed to alert him if someone had entered while he was not inside. Standing there, with his hand hovering over the knob, he mentally ran down the short list of people who could enter without going through the house: Hedwig, Dobby, or someone coming to bring him to The Burrow, as promised in Hermione's last letter — It's not much, but this afternoon I overheard Professor Dumbledore tell Mrs. Weasley that you'd be arriving here later this summer. Hedwig was still in her cage for the day, leaving either Dobby or someone there to rescue him.

"Please don't be Dobby… Please don't be Dobby," Harry chanted in a whisper as he unlatched the locks and pushed the door.

His face fell, along with any hope of leaving Privet Drive that night. Dobby wasn't bouncing on his bed or going through his wardrobe, but there also wasn't anyone waiting to tell him to pack his truck. In fact, the quiet and empty room was worse than if he walked in on Dudley tearing his Gryffindor posters off the wall or burning Hermione's letters stuffed in his top desk drawer because the room appeared to be completely empty.

That being said, it certainly didn't feel as normal as it seemed at first glance. Besides hearing what definitely sounded like someone in it, when he took a lap around the room, something about the air made him feel uneasy: it was heavier, warmer, and with a hint of a familiar scent… one he couldn't immediately place. Nothing was missing from the wardrobe, closet, and under the end — his few hiding places — and his shabby, half-made bed under the still closed window looked the same as he'd left it early that morning. His desk chair was still pushed all the way in with three of his Gryffindor ties hanging off the back from when he unpacked his first day "home", and all his most prized possessions — his wand, photo album, invisibility cloak, and the Marauders map — were still safely hidden in the undisturbed loose floorboard beside his bed.

"Maybe I am actually losing my mind," Harry admitted to himself. It wouldn't be the first time he heard noises no one else did, even if there had been a reason for it in Second Year all along.

After weeks of nightmares sleeping him awake at night, Harry finally gave in to his exhaustion and collapsed onto his bed, still dressed in his sweaty clothes. His worn-out pajamas weren't much better, after all, making changing them simply not worth the effort. He cracked the window slightly, thankful for the nighttime breeze to ease the hot, stuffy air in his room from the recent heat wave. Leaning his head against the wall behind him, he studied the cracks in his ceiling, memorizing each jagged edge to avoid shutting his eyes and falling asleep.

Memories of his parents at the graveyard came to his mind, and he fought back tears as he admitted how much he had wanted to go with them, no matter where they were or what he had to do to get there. When he'd finally gotten away and returned to Hogwarts, he was careful not to share those particular thoughts with anybody for fear of how his friends would react. What normal person wanted to see their dead parents so badly that they'd do anything to do it? And, once again, Ron and Hermione could not understand. How could they? Only another orphan could understand the hollow void in his chest, the spot left for the love by his parents… one that could never, ever, be filled.

Harry did not know how long he lay there, consumed by those horrible thoughts; it could have been twenty minutes or three hours. Eventually, though, he heard the locks clicking into place on the other side of his door, followed by his uncle's heavy footsteps and the sound of a door at the end of the hall, which belonged to his aunt and uncle, being almost slammed. With a hunch, Harry leaned across his desk to see the time — 10:52. He'd have to stay awake at least until midnight to make sure his nightmares didn't wake his relatives.

To help pass the time, Harry grabbed the letter he received from Hermione during their first week of summer. It was in this letter that she mentioned Dumbledore promising to retrieve him "sometime" and how they were keeping a close watch on him in Little Whinging. Harry did not know who "they" were, and she had written nothing else but he guessed it explained the weird rustling of leaves he'd hear in the garden, as well as the random feeling he'd get of being watched. It was why he had expected someone to be in his room when he'd entered and was disappointed to find no one there for him. Despite replying to Hermione twice, she had yet to answer back, forcing Harry to push his worry aside each night he went without a letter.

Suddenly, another tremor shot through his arm, sending Hermione's letters tumbling to the floor and he heard the phantom sound of Voldemort gleefully yelling, "Crucio!"

He started counting to himself, "One... two... three..." to calm himself down and to allow the uncontrolled movement to flow through him. The shaking subsided as he reached thirty-seven, and he curled up on his side facing the window. Shifting himself into as comfortable a position as he could, he let out a loud groan, "Bloody hell."

"I take it Madam Pomfrey did not administer an anti-Cruciatus potion after you returned from the maze," a familiar, and unnerving — considering it was in his bedroom — drawl came from near his bedroom door, interrupting his attempt at rest. "I'm sure you assumed you'd be immune to the aftereffects of it and chose not to tell her you were cursed… What was it?... Three times in less than a quarter of an hour?"

Harry sighed and closed his eyes, silently pleading, "Please don't be Snape in my bedroom. Please, don't be Snape in my bedroom," knowing it was pointless. Nonetheless, even though he expected it, the sight of Severus Snape standing in the middle of his tiny embarrassingly drab bedroom, dressed in what Harry thought to be the muggle version of his school robes, a black muggle long-sleeved shirt over a pair of black pants and black boots — does he even own any color other than black?! — shocked him to his core.

He wanted to be angry. He wanted to scream at the man to leave, but as quickly as it came, the rage dissipated. "How did you get in here?" He simply asked, his tone emotionless. "You can't be in here… my aunt–"

"Your aunt, what?" The professor challenged, stepping out of the shadow of his closet and towards the bed. His hands were clasped behind his back, giving Harry a better look at him. He looked about as worn out as Harry felt, making the professor appear more human and possibly explaining the slight worry in his dark, usually furious eyes. "Do you honestly believe I cannot disappear before she removes the five locks I heard them fasten on the outside of your door? Anything you'd like to say about that?"

"No, not really." Harry's eyes flickered between the door where Snape gestured and back. "You never answered my question. What are you doing here?"

"Your question was how did I get in here, not what am I doing here." Snape removed Harry's chair from the desk and straddled it backward in a single smooth, swift motion. "Neither of which would be any help if someone with less nefarious intentions had surprised you-"

"I wasn't surprised."

"Your first instinct should have been to grab your wand to defend yourself."

Snape reached for the Holly wand on the desk, but Harry moved faster than he had in days and snatched it first. Holding it out in front of him with his uninjured, non-dominant hand, he asked, "How do I know you're not here to kidnap me or kill me?"

"We never would have had the opportunity for this conversation if I were here to harm you, now would we? Because we both know you'd either be dead or halfway to wherever you think I'd be taking you, which the protective enchantments surrounding this house would not allow." Even though Snape's explanation was reasonable, Harry still refused to lower his wand because Neither wizard budged as the seconds passed, until at long last, Snape caved; a move Harry would relish for days. "I entered through your window and Sirius Black sent me."

Harry's heart dropped. "Sirius–"

"–is an impulsive, dimwitted, vile human being and safe with Albus in a location I cannot disclose even if I wanted to," the professor spat. "You, however, are not safe here and Black has asked me to remedy it."

Harry gripped the handle of his wand against the build-up of sweat on his palm. Snape didn't so much as flinch at the movement, nor did he reach for his wand. In fact, Harry couldn't help but notice how at ease the man appeared as he sat at the desk in his most despised student's bedroom, and the ugly sight of fake Moody transforming back into Crouch Jr sprung into his mind. If Crouch Jr pretended to be someone else for an entire year at Hogwarts, this man could be anyone.

Harry steadied his wobbling arm. "How do I know you're Professor Snape?"

"I suppose you're not such an idiot, after all, are you?" The older wizard clicked his tongue. "In your first Quidditch game, I used the counter curse to keep Quirrell from slamming your broom, and you, to the ground like a paper airplane. I would have likely succeeded too if not for Miss Granger setting fire to my robes."

Although Harry racked his brain on who else might know the details about that incident, Snape's frustrated voice, and dark expression, told Harry all he needed to know. He lowered his wand and rubbed his sore left arm, not used to using it as his wand arm.

"Not safe from who?" Harry warily asked, peering around his room as if someone might jump out of the walls. Snape had, after all. "And why isn't Dumbledore here?"

"Whom," Snape corrected with a sigh, an act that Harry never thought he'd see from the normally stoic man. "Albus believes you are safe here–"

"Well, there you go!"

"But you are not," Snape finished. "I am the one who attended the Dark Lord's summons where he all but outlined his plans to kill your aunt, capture you, and use you in another ritual. One he believes will win him the war."

Harry traced his fingers lightly on the spot where Pettigrew cut him. The movement unintentionally drew the professor's attention to his most recent injury.

"What did you do to your hand?"

Before Harry could answer, Snape grabbed his wrist, nearly yanking the young wizard off the bed in the process. His long fingers wrapped around his wrist and tightened as Harry attempted to pull away. Recognizing he wasn't going anywhere, Harry half turned towards the window as the professor unwound the towel, which was now soiled again with two large splotches of red — most likely from his rapid movements — to examine his injury.

"It's a cut," Harry unhelpfully supplied. "From doing dishes… I lost my grip and my hand slipped on a knife."

"Accidentally?" The dark eyes that peered up at him dared him to lie.

Harry nodded, not trusting his voice to sound stable. Whether Snape believed him, Harry didn't care, but the professor pulled a small vial from a duffle bag near his feet that Harry hadn't noticed.

"Essence of Dittany," Snape offered. Never releasing or lightening his grip on Harry, Snape opened the bottle single-handedly and drew up the liquid. Hovering the dropper over the cut, he looked at Harry and added, "This may sting a bit."

"A bit" wasn't anywhere close to how Harry would describe the sharp, stinging pain as his skin literally knitted itself back together with each drop. Magic, especially potions — not that he'd admit it in his current company — continued to amaze him every single year.

"Thank you," he muttered when the last of the skin fused, leaving a small line where the cut had been. Focusing on his hand brushing over the new skin on his palm, he asked, "Is that true? About his plans for me and Sirius not thinking I'm safe?"

Snape cleared his throat, another too-human thing for him to do. "Do you think I'd be here otherwise?"

Harry's head snapped up. "Why can't you ever just answer my fucking question instead of answering it with another question?! I don't know what to think right now!"

The air between them grew heavy, but Harry held his ground, refusing to be intimidated by his professor in his own bedroom.

"Yes. However, I do not expect you to believe me," Snape eventually replied. He bent down to return the potion bottle to the bag and came back up with what appeared to be a small mirror in his hands. "Sirius gave me this mirror so that he could tell you himself. Hold the mirror–" Snape placed the object in Harry's outstretched hands, "–and say his name. He's waiting for you now."

The mirror felt far heavier than it should have given its size, and a large part of Harry feared he'd see Sirius dead on the other side. He never heard himself whisper "Sirius Black" but he must have because the next thing Harry knew, Sirius's unharmed — although ragged-looking — face replaced his reflection.

"Harry! It's me, Sirius… Padfoot… Snuffles," his Godfather exclaimed. Based on the room in the background, wherever Dumbledore had him hiding away, it looked better than the cave he had been living in. "I was afraid… I'm glad you got the mirror. How are you?"

Harry shook his head to clear away the fuzziness from the odd situation he found himself in. "I'm good. A little… erm… I'm confused, Sirius. I thought someone was coming to get me. Bring me to wherever you and Ron and Hermione are. Snape showed up… he says I'm not safe. Is he bringing me to you?"

The pain in Sirius's eyes showed clearly through the glass, and Harry knew the answer before Sirius started talking again. "You can't come here right now, Harry. Albus wants you to stay there and I know he has his reasons, and I can't get into the details now, but he may have other priorities that I am not willing to test. Snape–."

"But Sirius–"

"I need you to listen to me, Harry," Sirius said in a panicked voice Harry hadn't heard him use before. "I know this is going to sound far-fetched, but your life may depend on it."

And so Harry pulled his feet up onto the bed and listened to the most outrageous story he had ever heard; each part sounding more unbelievable than the last. James and his mother had faked their marriage to protect him, but they actually fell in love in the end. As soon as the war ended, James had planned to officially adopt Harry, only they both had sacrificed themselves to save him as a baby. His biological father was a muggle — or no-maj, as Sirius called him — living in the United States and Snape was going to smuggle him over there. His real name, the one given to him by his mother, was Harry Anthony Evans. He'd never been a Potter.

As if sensing Harry's doubt, Snape handed him a duplicate of the letter his mother left for Sirius; not that it helped him believe any of it as he didn't recognize her handwriting. He'd have to trust Sirius and Snape — was he really friends with my mum?! — that it was, indeed, Lily Evans'... or Potter, he didn't know… words.

At first, Harry was furious. Furious at his mother for hiding his biological father, this Tony Stark man, away from him, and leaving him to be raised with the Dursleys. Then his anger shifted to Sirius, and how if he had not gone after Peter Pettigrew the night they died, he would have gotten custody of Harry, read the letter, and who knew where he'd be today. Definitely not sitting in a bedroom of old, tattered hand-me-downs, getting two small meals a day, and treated like a House Elf.

The next part of Sirius's story sounded just as outlandish as the rest. They — Sirius, the Weasleys, Hermione, and occasionally others who passed through, like Snape — were all living in a place Sirius couldn't say. A few nights ago Snape had come to them in the middle of the night demanding Dumbledore put Harry into deeper hiding, something like the level his parents had been in on the night Voldemort killed them. Dumbledore had refused. That he wouldn't put Harry's best interests first hit Harry the hardest, having practically idolized the man throughout the years. Sirius made sure to state that he didn't think Dumbledore had bad intentions, and that it was more that he trusted his magic over Voldemort's and truly believed Harry would be safest at Privet Drive, then at "Headquarters" until he went to Hogwarts in September.

Harry wasn't sure what to believe. On the one hand, he liked to believe that a powerful wizard like Dumbledore had good reasons for wanting Harry here. Dumbledore, on the other hand, oversaw Hogwarts and Harry hadn't really been safe there. Every one of his four years had been filled with more danger than one should experience at a boarding school, even being the famed Harry Potter. And if Snape was right, if Voldemort's ritual would win him the war, Harry needed to stay as far away from him as possible.

Sirius ended the magic mirror call by telling him to trust Snape with the next steps — a feat in and of itself — and to always keep the mirror with him so Harry could contact him or Snape in an emergency. Beyond that, Sirius warned Harry that he couldn't contact anyone, including his friends and relatives. Harry almost argued that it wasn't worth it, but he got too choked up when Sirius told him he loved him. If Harry had any reservations about joining this "scheme", they had gone straight out the window at those three words. If he and Sirius wanted to be a family someday, Harry needed to be alive and Voldemort had to be defeated first.

Clutching the mirror to his chest, already wanting to see Sirius again, Harry asked his professor, "So what do we do now?"

Snape, who had primarily sat in the room's corner while Harry and Sirius talked, seemed to have a weight lifted off his shoulders as Harry reluctantly agreed.

"Here." He reached into his bag of tricks and handed Harry a backpack. "Pack just the essentials, including your invisibility cloak–" Harry sent him a harsh glare, "-yes I know about the blasted thing… it may be useful later. We need to make it appear as if you ran away on your own accord."

"What about Hedwig?" Harry tossed his best clothes into the bag, watching each article disappear into the seemingly endless bottom. "And my school stuff?"

"Would you take your school supplies if you ran away and didn't have a bag enchanted with a featherlight and extension charm?" Harry shook his head, although the extension charm explained why his clothes weren't visible in the bag. "Then leave it all. And send Hedwig to the Burrow. We'll be traveling exclusively by muggle means and an owl will attack the wrong sort of attention. Arthur is still living there, plus I have a feeling that is where you'd send her if you ran away."

"Right." For the second time that night, Harry got choked up as he said goodbye to his first friend. "Head to the Borrow, girl. I'll be alright and I'll see you soon."

Hedwig nipped at his hand, preened the hair on his fringe, and then took off into the dark night. Harry remained at the window, feeling Snapes gaze upon his back.

"What about the guard outside?" Harry asked, not seeing any of the witches or wizards supposedly assigned to guard his home. "Won't they see me leaving with you?"

The window in front of him suddenly shut, courtesy of Snape hiding behind the curtain.

"And you know about this guard, how?"

Harry shrugged. "Hermione told me in her letter. She overheard Sirius mentioning it to Remus. About the only helpful thing she's sent me."

"Yes, well, Miss Granger has the habit of putting her nose where it doesn't belong." Snape glared at Harry out of the corner of his eyes. "All I can say is that I suppose we are fortunate that Mundungus Fletcher, the member assigned to babysit you today, is a thief who conveniently discovered a set of rare cauldrons… available… for his side business, leaving your home currently unattended. Now finish packing so we can be long gone before he returns."

With a deep, sad sigh, Harry packed everything in the floorboard; all of it considered irreplaceable and what he'd bring if running away. Then he moved to his closet only to realize it just held his wrinkled school robes.

"What about school?" He bluntly asked. "Will it be safe for me to go back in September? How else am I going to finish my magical classes?"

Harry was pretty sure he saw Snape actually roll his eyes. "You don't think more than a day ahead throughout the entire school year and now you want a drawn-out plan? Your first concern should be to survive to see next month. We'll solve next month's problem when you make it there!"

"Fine!" Harry snapped. He plopped himself onto his bed to pull on his trainers. Once he finished, he stood in front of Snape, not realizing how much he'd grown in the last few years, now almost eye-to-eye with the man. "Can you at least tell me where we're going?"

Snape smiled, a terrifying, ugly smile if Harry had ever seen one, and handed him a small burgundy booklet with "EUROPEAN UNION. UNITED KINGDOM OF GREAT BRITAIN AND NORTHERN IRELAND" written in gold on the cover. Harry didn't need Snape to tell him that the book was a passport, and even if Harry should have expected it, he couldn't hold back his gasp when he opened the cover and saw a picture of his face next to the name HARRY ANTHONY EVANS.

"We are going to New York."