Chapter 10
“Hello, Albus,” Amelia Bones said as she sat across from him at the table. They were in interrogation room three, and the headmaster had been summoned to discuss his lack of action toward children who had reported their abuse to the mediwitch. His was the first of several interviews slated for the coming days, and Bones knew that this one would most likely be the most difficult of the lot. “Thank you for coming.”
“It’s not like you gave me much choice, Amelia,” the old man remarked with censure in his voice, his practiced look of disappointment on his face. The DMLE head seemed unfazed by the man’s antics, if the slight smirk on her face was anything to go by. “You threatened to have your Aurors drag me down through the school if I didn’t cooperate.”
Ignoring his rebuke, she touched the recording orb in its cradle, activating it for the interview to come. “Today is May 14, 1983, and Albus Dumbledore is here to answer a few questions regarding the lack of action toward children reporting their own abuse, by himself or any of his staff. I am Amelia Susan Bones, Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement and interviewer. Please state your name for the record.”
“I am Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Supreme Mugwump of the International Confederation of Wizards and Chief Warlock…”
“Regulus Arcturus Black is the newly recognized Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot,” Bones interrupted with a smile. “Please do remember that when introducing yourself in the future. Now, to get some background to your credentials, had you taken the mandatory classes on recognizing children in peril, as is required by the Wizarding Education Department, before you took your post as headmaster?”
“I did not,” the old man replied, nose in the air. “I was chosen by Armando Dippet to replace him in nineteen sixty-six, and child abuse in the UK wasn’t even recognized. As far as the muggles and magicals are concerned, it’s just standard discipline, so there’s nothing to report.”
“The children who report being mistreated are in dangerous situations, and you decide to do nothing?” the DMLE head asked incredulously.
“The parents have broken no laws concerning how they’re to treat their children, and since we’re making efforts to keep the muggle and magical worlds separate, we aren’t required to interfere in the muggles lives to the extent that you believe we should. It’s illegal to abduct children from their families, and if we make efforts to do anything about the way that the muggles discipline their children, we could bring their wrath down upon our heads.”
“Your hypocrisy is shining through, Albus,” Amelia snarked angrily. “You want us to be able to coexist with the muggles, showing them all that we can do, yet you want us to maintain a ‘hands off’ stance when it comes to them committing violent acts against their own kids. Tell me, how are we any better than those animals who beat their kids, if we sit back and allow it without consequence?”
“The muggles have the right to discipline their children in any way they wish,” Albus justified weakly. “We have no more business interfering with the way they do things than they have to interfere with our ways. If we’re to open our borders to them and learn to get along with them, then we must abide by their laws and their customs.”
“Even if that ‘discipline’ results in a child’s death, like it did with the Potter heir?” Bones asked incredulously.
“I believe the Dursleys were an aberration, and not the norm for most muggles,” the headmaster insisted in a stronger voice, sure of his convictions. “I’ve seen a great many children pass through Hogwarts’ doors, and I’ve never seen any who looked to be in such desperate straits that we needed to interfere. Believe me, Amelia, the muggleborns are safe with their parents and caretakers. You have little need to worry about them.”
“Your mediwitch, Poppy Pomfrey, was gracious enough to provide me with the reports from quite a few muggleborns and halfbloods raised in the muggle world, and every single one of them outline injuries to the children that are consistent with abuse. How do you explain that?”
“Poppy is very good at her job,” Dumbledore remarked, “and she can tend to be a bit overzealous in the protection of her charges. I’m sure that it’s all a misunderstanding, and that the children are only showing signs of overenthusiastic spell casting and a bit of rough horseplay.”
“So,” Bones intoned as she dragged a stack of folders in front of her, opening the top one and staring at the words scrawled on the top page, “evidence of a spiral fracture to this girl’s forearm, a broken clavicle, a fractured orbital socket, whip marks on her back, and one leg slightly shorter than the other due to an untreated break in the tibia are all just ‘rough horseplay’? You do realize that the only way to get a spiral fracture in the forearm is if the arm had been violently twisted to such an extent that the torque would shatter the bone.”
“That’s...that’s not what really happened,” the headmaster protested feebly. “It had to have been her brother wrestling too roughly with her.”
“She’s an only child, Albus, and even if she did have a sibling, it wouldn’t explain the lash scars across her back.”
“I...I need to think about this,” the old man muttered to himself, face pale. “Do you think we could continue this at a later time?”
“No,” the DMLE head demurred, eyes hard. “I think I have enough to continue the investigation. You may leave, but don’t even think of getting out of the UK. I may have more questions for you after I’ve investigated a little further, so consider yourself a person of interest.”
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Severus and Tom were walking through the atrium of the Ministry at the same time that Dumbledore was exiting the lifts. They stopped right in front of the grotesque fountain and stared at each other for a few long seconds. Riddle was wearing an impervious parsel glamour that was anchored to his Peverell ring, which altered his appearance enough to not be recognizable as Riddle, but still with some of the Peverell features. Hawthorne was back in Crete, being watched over by Narcissa; neither man wanted to expose their son to the unwashed masses.
“Severus, my boy,” the old man chirped in surprise, blue eyes staring intently at the man beside his former Potions Master. “Have you come to the Ministry to retake your position as potions professor for Hogwarts?” he asked eagerly.
“No, Albus,” the younger man demurred with a slight smirk. “I’ve already been accepted elsewhere, which is why I’d tendered my resignation.” Dumbledore looked pointedly at the other man, and taking the hint, Severus introduced his husband. “May I introduce my spouse, Tavish Antioch Peverell. Darling,” Sev turned to his mate, “this is Albus Dumbledore, headmaster of Hogwarts.”
“Pleased to make your acquaintance,” Peverell said in a deep baritone. Since it wasn’t at the highest timbre that Riddle’s voice had been during the only interview he’d had with Dumbledore, the old man didn’t recognize him as Tom Riddle.
“Peverell, you say?” the Supreme Mugwump queried curiously. “So it was to you that the Potter vaults, properties and seats had gone?”
“Indeed,” the disguised Dark Lord admitted with a smile. “James Potter was descended from Ignotus Peverell, which made us very, very distant cousins. The goblins had combined the Potter holdings with the Peverell ones, since there aren’t any Potters left to whom to give the inheritances. Now, we don’t have time to chat right now. We’re meeting with Minister Black and the head of the DMLE to discuss some ideas we had for the protection of magical children raised in the muggle world. If you will excuse us…”
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Original Timeline
September 10, 1995
The Daily Prophet
POTTER HEIR NOT A POTTER!
True Potter child died in infancy!
Rita Skeeter, reporter
Yes, dear readers, you read that right. The boy we all believed was Harry James Potter wasn’t, in fact, the son of Lily and James Potter. After the poor child had succumbed to his injuries, his body was sent to the Ministry’s crime lab, where evidence had been gathered for the official report and death certificate. The discoveries made about the teen were shocking, and paint Albus Dumbledore in an extremely unflattering light.
The young man’s body was littered with bruises, and there was evidence of persistent malnutrition in the boy’s bones and muscles, indicating a pernicious starvation of the teen from the moment he’d been taken from the destroyed cottage that horrible Hallowe’en night. The signs of abuse didn’t stop there, however, as there was evidence of scarring to the boy’s back and buttocks, as well as many badly healed broken bones and several untreated infections that caused a great deal of damage to the youth’s body.
The most shocking thing, however, about the young man was that he wasn’t, in fact, Harry James Potter. His identity is unknown at present; DNA evidence taken from the corpse, to verify the identity of the child, does not match in any way, shape or form that of the Potters. Through blood samples contributed when James Potter and Lily Evans were first examined by the mediwitch at Hogwarts, the medical examiners were able to prove without a doubt that the boy we thought was the child of James and Lily Potter wasn’t. In speaking with the goblins of Gringotts, it was discovered that there was a death certificate issued for the true Potter child, who had succumbed to a little-known but fatal syndrome called Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, or more colloquially known as cot death. It’s where a baby, for whatever reason, suddenly stops breathing, and suffocates whilst the parents sleep on, unaware that there is anything wrong with their child until they find the dead baby the next day.
There is no rhyme or reason as to why this happens, and there is some initial research that points to some sort of obstructed airway at birth that goes unnoticed by the pediatricians. That the true Potter infant had passed from this tragic circumstance is only part of the mystery. In order for the changeling to be passed off as the child of James and Lily, they had to have been complicit in trying to fool the wizarding world with their lies. Were they aware of the change? Did they discover their dead baby and decide to replace him with someone else’s? Who were their accomplices for such an underhanded and cruel action? And what of the Potter holdings and vaults? Will they be reabsorbed by a distant relative branch, or will they languish in Gringotts until the goblins decide what to do with them?
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September 15, 1995
FINAL AUTOPSY REPORT
Harry James Potter
Lanie Parrish, Chief Magical Medical Examiner
The victim is a white male, approximately one hundred sixty three centimeters tall, weighing approximately fifty four and a half kilograms, with black hair and green eyes. He has a lightning shaped scar in the center of his forehead, and he is slightly under the fiftieth percentile in height and weight for his age. This discrepancy can be attributed to the lack of adequate nutrition for much of his childhood years, which changed once he began at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. His bones exhibit a lower than normal amount of calcium, and there is evidence of many poorly healed fractures and breaks to the long bones of his arms and legs, as well as some calcification to his rib cage that indicates fractures during his life.
His skin shows a slowness to return to normal when testing turgor, which indicates a lack of adequate hydration. There are numerous scars littering his back, legs and arms, the most serious of which are the strap marks to his back and legs, indicating physical torture most likely inflicted by his relatives. There is a deep puncture in his left forearm, and from the information gathered at the school, it was inflicted by the fang of a thousand year old basilisk. There’s also a long, rather wide scar that looks to be made by a knife blade, and sources indicate that this was where the child’s blood was taken for a resurrection ritual.
Cause of death was a dementor’s Kiss, according to witnesses to the crime, and the victim’s cousin was also murdered in the same manner. Blood tests indicated that the child was not, in fact, Harry James Potter, and that his parents are Severus Tobias Snape and Tom Marvolo Riddle. In order to discover the maternal and paternal links to the child, the medical records at Hogwarts were examined closely, as were all the blood and magical samples collected by mediwitch Poppy Pomfrey, as is required by Ministry decree, so that the children could be tracked should they use their wands before they reach the age of majority.
“Merlin,” Lucius whispered, aghast. “The Potters somehow stole the Dark Lord’s child. I have to tell him what happened to his son, but I’m not looking forward to the fallout from this news. Severus and he were inconsolable when their baby disappeared, and it’s probably going to devastate them to learn that they’d been abusing and hunting their own son.”