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"How many students did you have to keep in the infirmary last night?" Pomona Sprout asked her friend Poppy sympathetically, pouring her a cup of tea. The mediwitch looked like she hadn't got a wink of sleep.
"Half the first years were brought in by the prefects for calming draughts and homesickness remedies, and I saw at least a third of the second and third years, nearly a quarter of the fourth years and a few of the upper year students, but I only had a few that I needed to keep overnight, this was a terrible start to the school year for them," Poppy replied.
Only half?" Pomona asked surprised and concerned. She would have thought they'd all have benefited.
"All of your lot," Poopy reassured her. "Half of the Slytherin and Ravenclaws but none of the Gryffindors. Sometimes being told you're brave enough to be sorted into Godric's house can do more harm than good."
Pomona agreed. There were more than a few students sorted into Gryffindor that she wished had joined her own house where they would be supported by their peers rather than having to fend for themselves in the name of bravery.
"Did Potter turn up. What crazy excuse did he have for not being where he should be this time?" Minerva asked, looking out over the still nearly empty great hall. Between I being a Sunday and the probability of most of the students having difficulty falling asleep or nightmares, the first hour of breakfast wasn't well attended. She noticed that none of her third year Gryffindors had arrived yet.
"I didn't see him, he didn't come looking for assistance of course. He almost never does unless someone sends or drags him in. Filius went down to check that none of the students had been left on the train and didn't find him," Poppy replied.
"I don't know that he ever got onto the train. When I was at the station, the point-me spell for him still pointed south," Filius said. "I hope he wasn't trying to make his own way to the school for some reason. I'm a little surprised that we didn't get a letter from him if he was unable to get to the train."
Albus looked alarmed and quickly walked out of the great hall, as soon as he was alone, he pulled out his own wand and cast point-me Harry Potter. The wand moved very slowly to end up pointed towards the south. 'He's a long way from here,' he thought frowning. He wondered if the Dursleys were refusing to let him come back to school, and decided to send someone to fetch him.
It was perhaps unfortunate that the first person he ran into after that was Severus but ignoring his misgivings he sent him to Little Whinging to collect Harry, hoping that the rescue would help the boy overcome his distrust for the Slytherin Head of House.
Severus spluttered in disbelief as Dumbledore walked off having refused to accept any of Severus' protests that he wasn't the right person to convince the spoiled brat to return to school. As if he didn't have enough to do looking after his own house and all the pepper-up potions, dreamless-sleep potions and calming draughts he needed to replace for the infirmary after last night.
-o0o-
Up in the Gryffindor dorms, Seamus, Dean and Neville were ready to head down to eat. "Breakfast finishes in half an hour, do you think that we should wake him?" Neville asked gesturing to a still snoring redhead in the remaining occupied bed.
"And have to listen to more of his ranting that Harry wouldn't have left without telling him?" Seamus asked sarcastically.
"He will be even more upset if he misses breakfast," Neville pointed out.
"Yeah he will. Missing breakfast will upset him worse than missing his supposed best mate," Dean retorted.
"He seemed a lot more angry than sad but that might just be his way of coping," Neville said quietly.
"Did you notice that Granger also seemed d more annoyed than upset?" Dean said.
"Well I for one don't care why he was carrying on like that. Harry deserves better and I have no desire to be yelled at again until I've had something to eat," Seamus replied, leading his friends down the stairs.
-o0o-
I was late afternoon before had finished all the preparation for classes to begin the next day and checked on his own little Snakes, and run out of excuses to delay completing the chore Dumbledore had given him. Severus reluctantly apparated into Mrs Figgs yard in Little Whinging.
Arabella greeted him with surprise. "Severus, what are you doing here? I thought you'd be busy with the situation at Hogwarts, from what 'The Prophet' said was going on."
"I'm chasing a wayward student," Severus said scowling.
"You mean Harry? I haven't seen him at all this summer," Arabella replied concerned.
"His family have moved away? Severus asked frowning.
"Oh no, that son of theirs has been out with his friends terrorising the neighbourhood children and vandalising walls and fences all over the place all summer and I saw Petunia at the shops the other day bragging what a wonderful boy her Dudley is, she didn't mention Harry but that's not unusual and she hurried off when she saw me so I wasn't able to stop and ask her about him," Arabella replied.
Severus was about to ask snidely if she was sure it wasn't Potter terrorising the neighbourhood when he caught the name she used. "Albus left Potter with Lily's sister Petunia?" he asked in shock.
"Didn't you know that? Petunia and Dudley are his only living relatives on his mother's side," Arabella reminded him frostily, not liking the clear disapproval for Albus' actions in his expression and tone.
Petunia hated Lily and hates magic, I cannot picture her taking in Potter's brat willingly," Severus said bluntly.
"She isn't fond of the boy, but he's barely been here since he left for Hogwarts the first time," Arabella admitted.
Severus nodded and hurried in the direction she gave him, relying on a notice-me-not charm to hide his robes. He wasn't going to be seen in public dressed like a muggle for anyone, least of all Harry Bloody Potter. There was no reason not to be comfortable.
He forced himself into the house when Petunia opened the door and demanded to know the whereabouts of her nephew.
"He's not here," Petunia snapped waspishly. "He made us drop him off in London back in June, after we went all that way to pick him up. Ungrateful sod."
"He hasn't been here at all this summer? Are you in contact with him?" Severus demanded, using Legilimency to rifle through her memories looking for signs of the boy, despite her denials, not caring that he was causing her pain.
What he found sickened him. He didn't like Potter, but no child deserved to have been brought up by the likes of Petunia and her husband. He recognised that the defiant arrogance he'd always been annoyed by was merely a defensive mechanism. Pushing the legilimens spell to its limits he determined that Petunia was telling the truth, she had no idea where Potter was, or where he had spent this summer and the majority of last summer and she honestly didn't care if he was living or dead.
To an outsider, the way Severus was holding Petunia looked a more affectionate, than the reality that he was merely forcing continued eye contact for a mental attack. Vernon arrived home and lost his temper and tried to attack the pair of them, when he saw the tall dark stranger standing there holding Petunia's face. Unfortunately for Vernon, Severus wasn't the muggle he expected him to be. He was a trained dueller with not an ounce of sympathy or mercy for fat middle aged muggles who abused wizarding children and responded with a bone breaking hex to the pelvis, shattering it in several places.
Vernon fell heavily making the pelvis fractures worse and injuring his spine but Severus didn't care about his pain, silencing his screams with a charm followed by a petrification spell. Severus took the opportunity to cast a Legilimens to ensure that the muggle didn't know anything about Harry's whereabouts.
To cover his tracks, Severus loaded them both into Vernon's expensive 2-year-old automobile, that Harry's money had paid for, and forced them to drive towards London as fast as they could go. He didn't know enough about cars to sabotage the stopping mechanisms but it didn't matter. Petunia didn't drive frequently and with the throbbing migraines they both had and the compulsion to speed, and her concern for Vernon who sat moaning in pain in the passenger seat, it wouldn't take long for Petunia to lose control of the car and drive it into a concrete barrier.
He contemplated trying to find the boy but decided that he had fulfilled his orders by going to the Dursleys. It wasn't his fault that the boy wasn't where Albus had left him, and he wished him well wherever he was. He certainly didn't want him returning to Hogwarts. He apparated back to Hogsmeade and locked himself in his quarters and got raging drunk to try to wash the horrific memories away, without bothering to report what he'd found.
-o0o-
Albus didn't eat breakfast in the great hall the next morning, not wanting the students and staff to witness the deluge of howlers that started arriving at the crack of dawn, and he was too busy trying to deal with the ministry and the board of governors to sit in the hall through the entire lunch hour, so it wasn't until the following evening that he noticed that Harry Potter still wasn't at Hogwarts.
After calling on Severus to find out what he found out from the Dursleys and reprimanding him for not coming to him immediately, Albus hurried to the edge of the wards to search for the boy himself. He cast the point-me spell, without getting a result. He cast again, pushing more magic into the charm but got the same results. The spell had worked the day before so either the boy was currently behind strong anti-scrying wards, had left the country or he'd been killed. That didn't bear thinking about. He needed to get the boy back. He went to the owlery and tried to send the boy a letter with a portkey to bring him back to school, but none of the owls would leave with it, even Fawkes refused to even touch the letter.
He travelled to the Dursleys home to get answers for himself, only to find the house empty. Both Dursleys were in hospital and would remain there for some time to come. He assumed that they were behind the mail wards with Harry and wondered who had told the boy and his family that wards like that existed and how to have them installed on their new home. He didn't try to cast the point me spell again, if he had he would have been surprised to find that it would have worked for all three people, the Dursleys in the hospital and Harry who had left the dimensional space in his tent since he'd tried it earlier.
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