Chapter 2
“BOY!” The shriek rang through the quiet neighborhood on Privet Drive, echoing on into Wisteria Lane and beyond as Petunia called for their slave. Neighbors all up and down the street poked their heads out of their doors, staring in shock at Number Four and wondering if the woman had lost her damn mind, yelling like that at dear-god-o’clock in the morning. There was silence for several moments, and people were beginning to return to, or in some cases, begin their daily routines when a deeper voice bellowed out, scaring the bejeezus out of the neighbors.
“BOY! YOU’D BETTER GET YOUR ARSE BACK HERE AT ONCE OR THERE WILL BE HELL TO PAY!” The Dursleys waited for a few moments more, knowing that the child was aware of the punishment he would receive if he didn’t respond at once. When no one showed up, Vernon and Petunia looked at each other, beginning to worry. They were quite aware that the old man who had dumped the freak on their doorstep had a way of keeping track of the unnatural thing, and they were starting to fear for their nice, normal lives.
“Where do you think he could be, Vernon?” his wife whispered. “I only meant to lock him out overnight, but since it was the weekend, and we had those plans, I completely forgot about him. I only just remembered when I went to his cupboard to wake him up to make breakfast.”
“Good riddance, I say,” the heavyset man groused with satisfaction. “Now we don’t need to worry about that thing infecting our precious Dudders.”
“But what if that old man comes looking for him?” she hissed a little frantically. “If he comes here and sees the freak missing, he’ll do something to us for losing the boy.”
“How will he know?” the fat man queried arrogantly. “It’s not like they have any freak ways to keep an eye on the abomination.”
“Those safeguards about which their school’s headmaster wrote,” she said, her fear ramping up a little. “He said that as long as we keep him here and he sees our place as his home, those...wards, I think, will protect us from the people who killed my worthless sister and her wastrel husband. Their kind won’t be able to get near the house as long as the boy lives here. Now that he’s not here, we’re in danger from their kind, Vernon!”
“Grunnings has other offices elsewhere, Pet,” Dursley reassured his wife, voice trembling with nervousness. “I’ll see if there’s an opening at another branch and, if there is, we’ll sell the house and move before that lot figures out that the freak is missing.”
Two weeks later, the wards fell with a klaxon of noise and alarms, which scared several years of life out of Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore. He flitted from gizmo to gizmo, staring at them as they fell silent, one after another, until the stillness in the office was almost funereal. “Shite!” the old headmaster bellowed as he hiked up his robes and pelted down the spiral staircase, panic barely held at bay. Professors and students stared with wide eyes as their leader barreled past them without so much as a by your leave, the panic on his face scaring quite a few of them. He hurtled out the front doors of the school and down the staircase, running for all he was worth to the edge of the wards so that he could apparate to Little Whinging and check on his puppet.
With an excruciating stitch in his side, he spun on the spot and apparated to Wisteria Lane, landing in Arabella Figg’s yard. She was a squib and member of his Order of the Phoenix, and was tasked with keeping an eye on the last Potter heir, to make sure that he was safe and that no undesirables got anywhere near the Boy Who Lived. He frantically pounded on her door, waiting impatiently for her to open it. He heard a lot of meowing and shuffling as what sounded like a hundred cats shifted around inside, and finally she cracked the door open just enough to see who was there. “Albus!” she yelped, surprised. “Whatever are you doing here?”
“The wards fell around the Dursleys, and I need to know if you’ve seen anything unusual, or anyone who doesn’t belong here prowling around,” the old man barked out. Figg frowned fiercely at the old man and, fighting against the temptation to slam the door in his face, replied, voice icy.
“I wrote you about what those wretched people were doing to that poor child, but you did nothing about it. You told me that it was ‘training’ for the task he’d face as he got older, so I didn’t bother to contact you again. The only time I’d seen Harry was when the Dursleys needed to go somewhere, so they dropped him off here. I haven’t seen hide nor hair of the boy since last Saturday.” With that, she slammed the door in his face, and he flinched as he heard the locks snick.
Huffing, he spun on his heel and marched over to Number Four, Privet Drive, but hesitated in front of Number Seven, across the street from the Dursleys, as he saw moving trucks out front. Panic barely held in check, he hurried over and grabbed Petunia’s elbow; she was outside, supervising the loading of the vehicles and squeaked in fright at the touch. Twirling in place, she stared at the old man, barely recognizing him as the one who came to visit their family when Lily got her letter, but that fright was quickly replaced by rage. “You!” she snarled, advancing on Dumbledore and making him stumble back away from her. “What are you doing here?”
“I’ve...I’ve come to check on your nephew,” the old man stammered, momentarily scared of the muggle woman.
“He’s not here,” she snapped, “and now, because of your stupidity, we have to move in order to protect ourselves from your lot.”
“What do you mean, move?” Albus asked, gathering his senses and staring her down. “What did you do that the protections fell?”
“We didn’t do anything to that little freak!” she nearly shrieked as she got in his face. “We didn’t want him here in the first place! He was a useless burden, good only for doing grunt work around here. He didn’t finish his chores on time, and so he was locked out of the house, to fend for himself until we needed him again. When I called for him, he never came back, and good riddance, too.”
“He’s five years old, Petunia!” Dumbledore gasped, appalled. “How can you treat a five year old child like that?”
“He’s a FREAK, just like my repulsive sister!” Mrs. Dursley replied, eyes narrowed spitefully. “I’m glad she’s dead, and I hope her little monster is, too.” With that pronouncement ringing in his ears, she spun on her heel and continued to direct the moving company. Some of the movers were looking at the woman with thinly veiled disgust, but she was a paying customer, so they minded their own business. However, more than a couple of them were intending to go to the local constabulary and report the Dursleys for child abuse and neglect. Dumbledore divined some of these surface thoughts from the movers’ minds, and, after listening to the woman, didn’t think he’d lift a finger to protect her or her disgusting family.
Turning, and with his mind spinning at all the possible things that might have happened to their Savior, he made his way back to Mrs. Figg’s warded home and apparated away, landing in front of the Hog’s Head pub. He went inside and sat at the bar, giving his younger brother a weak smile as he asked for a tumbler of Glenlivet. Once served, Albus gulped it down and sighed heavily, staring into the bottom of the glass morosely. “What’s up, Albie?” Aberforth queried curiously.
“I think I just lost us the war...”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Severus came through the floo at Malfoy Manor, and was instantly greeted with shrieks of happiness from his two favorite boys. Cassini came charging into the floo room, bellowing, “Uncle Sev... Uncle Sev...” over and over again as he flew into the older man’s arms. Draco was steps behind his best friend and though he was excited to see his godfather, he was raised with a slightly different standard of behavior, so his approach was a little more sedate. Sev’s hand dropped to the top of the blond head and he allowed his godson to lead him to the solarium, where his husband, Regulus, was talking with Lucius, Narcissa, and the Lestranges. Cassini saw his mum and immediately started squirming to be let down. As soon as his feet touched the floor, he ran to Bella and climbed into her lap, snuggling into her arms and sighing happily as she engulfed him in a hug.
“Hello, darling,” Reg murmured as he rose and met his husband halfway. Draco skirted out of the way, going to the two-seated sofa on which his aunt Bella was sitting and climbing up beside her. Ever since Cassini and Draco had met they were nigh inseparable; where one went, the other surely followed. “How was your day?” Black asked as soon as he finished snogging his mate.
“Rough,” Severus Prince-Black replied a little breathlessly. “The old man found out that Harry Potter was no longer at Petunia’s and has been demanding that we all drop everything to go look for him. The new term is well under away, and we have so much to do on a daily basis, what with homework, lessons and nightly patrols. We don’t have time to comb the countryside, looking for his wayward puppet.”
“He hasn’t been able to get the boy’s location from you, has he, Sev?” Bellatrix asked worriedly, arms tightening protectively around her son.
“No, he hasn’t,” the Potions Master reassured gently. Bella’s sanity was precarious at best, and any overwhelming upset could quite possibly set her off. No one wanted that; an insane Bellatrix Lestrange was a deadly Bellatrix Lestrange. “And he’s not going to, either. My Occlumency shields are nigh impenetrable, even by him, thanks to Riddle’s training before he betrayed the assassin culture. I do have some good news, however. A little three year old orphaned girl has been found wandering in Hogsmeade. That no one noticed her before this is, quite frankly, appalling. Anyway, she’s got coal black hair and the clearest amber eyes, and no one seems to be able to get through to her. She really needs a home and a loving family, and I thought she’d be welcome here, with you, Bella.”
“Where is she?” the woman queried anxiously, arms tightening slightly around her ‘firstborn’ son. “Did you bring her with you?”
“Ah, no,” Prince-Black prevaricated. “She...ah...she has some health issues resulting from becoming an orphan and being on her own for however long her parents have been gone, so she’s with madam Pomfrey right now. I told the mediwitch that I knew of a couple that would be more than happy to take her in, and she’s willing to sign off on a health certificate as soon as she clears the girl.”
“You don’t love me anymore?” came a plaintive voice from her lap, and she looked down into emerald eyes filled with pain. Instantly she cuddled him close and whispered soothing reassurances in his ear.
“Of course we love you, baby,” she told the little boy, rubbing his back in comfort. “We will always love you. But Mum has a huge heart that needs to be filled with children, and if I can save a child the same way that I saved you, I would do it in a heartbeat. Don’t you want to be a big brother, and protect a little sister like a big brother is supposed to?”
“She won’t call me names or pick on me, will she?” Cassini queried, looking into his mother’s eyes and seeing the hope hiding there.
“Oh, baby, she’ll never be like your bastard cousin,” Rodolphus told his son, a fond smile on his face as he carded his fingers through unruly inky locks. “We will never be the Dursleys, treating you like an inconvenience or a burden. You will never be a leftover, no matter how many kids we take in. You will always and forever be our firstborn, and my heir. We just want to make the Lestrange family grow, and this is the only way we have to do it.” The little boy thought about what his parents had said for several minutes, before a smile lit his face.
“Okay,” Cassini said with a firm nod. “I think more brothers and sisters would be fine.”