Doppelgänger

1992, Howarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry. It was the end of the school year.

In a magical school one wouldn’t expect to find things to be precisely normal, right? But that year was particularly…unusual, to put it nicely.

An eleven years old kid had just risked his life defending a really valuable and way too powerful artifact from a man (and a half?) who was extremely dangerous. Clearly, none of that should have ever been the boy’s responsibility and in ideal circumstances all the aforementioned people would have never been on the same building. But those weren’t ideal circumstances at all.

At the end, the kid was miraculously able to drive the thief (thieves?) away and he came out of it relatively unscathed.

And so, Harry Potter was now on the platform at Hogsmade Station, waiting to board the Howarts Express for London.

Severus Snape watched the train pulling out of the station. He was dressed with his usual black robes buttoned up all the way to the neck, with his typical sneer on his face.

His Occlumency shield were thick in order to hide from anyone and everyone, the sadness he felt for Lily’s son, knowing the child was going back to a place where he wasn’t really wanted.

Potter wasn’t a bad child (because at eleven years old, that was all one could be, a child). Quite the opposite actually, the boy worked hard on his classes, had friends and was kind to practically everyone. All in all, Severus could see a lot of Lily on him. However, the state of Harry’s clothing, his reserved attitude, too small frame and lack of general knowledge of the Magical Word were, at the very least, alarming signs.

Anyway, Dumbledore wouldn’t listen to reasons and the rest of the teachers trusted the old man blindly. So there was nothing the potion master could do.

Severus then turned on his heals and made his way back to the castle to pack his belongings and get ready for a summer that simply wouldn’t be enough to properly rest from the events of the past year nor to get ready for what was to come. The professor could already imagine all the ridiculous, hard and dangerous tasks he would have to do for the headmaster of Howarts, things that the rest of the Order didn’t know about, that none of them could accomplish, things that would have him send to Azkaban if the wrong person knew.

At least I won’t get bored, he thought with irony, hiding a sigh.

Inside one of the compartments of the Howarts Express Harry Potter, Ronald Weasley and Hermione Granger were discussing and reviewing the events of their past school year. Harry was telling them about all the things that they didn’t know about his confrontation with Voldemort.

Of course, the three students were unaware of the little spy that was traveling with them.

Inside a cage placed on the seat next to Ron, a brown rat with a missing pinky finger pretended to sleep while listening to the children's conversation.

And that was how, hours later, in the Burrow in the middle of the night, Scabbers the rat scaped its cage, ran all the way down the stairs and traveled across the walls until it found a crack to go outside. Already out of the house, the rat started running until it reached a place where nobody would be able to take a peek. Then it changed its form into a short and overweigh man, with a few strands of sandy blonde hair mixed with white, little and round eyes and a pair of frontal teeth way bigger than your average. All put together, his features gave him a rat-like appearance.

Peter Pettigrew rolled up the left sleeve of an ugly, old and dirty shirt, reveling the partially faded Dark Mark. With his wand he pressed on the image. Nothing happened for a couple of seconds. Then he felt something like fire under his forearm's skin. He felt himself being compressed and enlarged while he was forcefully disappareted in front of his lord's feet. From his point of view on the floor, the man standing was giving him his back, but looking up he could see a deformed face.

“Master!” squawked the rat-man giving an exaggerated bow.

“Get up, Pettigrew!” commanded Lord Voldemort impatiently. “What has brought you here?”

“Master,” he repeated standing up while keeping his head lowered in submission. “I’ve come to serve you, Master. I know how to find Potter! I can kill him… I can eliminate him for y-!”

“Crucio!” Voldemort cut him mid-sentence using Quirrel’s body to curse his servant. “I am the only one who can kill Potter!”, he hissed furiously. But stopped a moment to think.

'The rat says to know how to find the boy…'

In his current state trying to harm the child would be fruitless. But maybe there was a way to get his body back while disabling the protections Lily Potter had left on his son.

Looking down at the wriggling figure on the floor with a grimace that wanted to be a smile, Voldemort started scheming a plan.

Several days passed until Ron decided to send a letter to Harry asking how he was doing and telling him about his own summer.

The redhead was writing on his desk in the bedroom he still shared with his sister Ginny. His rat, Scabbers, was his only company.

His mother called all her children. Dinner was ready and the delicious smell of food was luring Ron downstair.

He made his way to the dinning room, leaving his mail ready to send.

Scaabbers made himself sure that nobody was around before hiding behind the open door and transforming back into his human form. Peter Pettigrew closed the door and locked it, just to be safe. With a quick movement of his wand, he put a tracking charm on the letter. Then, he morphed back into his rat form and ran back to his initial spot over the desk.

Back in his room, Ron didn’t even spare a thought for the closed door that he himself had left open. His attention was solely on the letter soon to be send.

Two nights later, Scabbers scaped the Weasley residence once again and apparated on Privet Drive. He walked following the pull on his magic until he reached the house with the number 4 on the door. Everything was dark and there was no way to know who lived there, but the force that throwed him back when he tried to walk over the garden’s grass was enough proof that The-Boy-Who-Lived was inside that house.

Pettigrew immediately reported his findings to his Master, who ordered him to gather some of his followers. Then they would wait for the right moment to abduct Potter and take him to Riddle Manor.

Nearly a month into his holidays, Harry Potter felt happier than ever. His aunt, uncle and cousin were as nasty always, but that didn’t matter, not with Howarts just a few weeks away. Also, the fact of him being magical with his relatives not knowing about the restrictions gave him a good advantage.

The boy couldn’t help himself from smiling at the memory of his cousin Dudley trying to mess with him. Harry didn’t need more than a few words like Hocus Pocus or Abracadabra to have the whale of a boy running upstairs for his mommy.

Of course, his aunt Petunia had been furious and after a long scolding, Harry was sent to wash the dishes, do the laundry, vacuum the living room and do the mowing (not that he minded, they would have made him do all that anyways).

And naturally, poor Dudders just had to receive a present to make up for the terrible scare that the freak of his cousin had given him.

So, sending Harry to their neighbor, Arabella Figg, Petunia and Dudley went to the mall looking for the perfect gift.

Harry was just a few meters away from Mrs. Figg’s house when two masked men dressed in black robes appeared out of thin air and stood directly on his path. Even though it was the middle of the day, there was nearly no one on outside. The few people tending to their gardens were seemingly unaware of the black figures, but those neighbors always turned a blind eye to anything unusual.

Harry reacted by turning around to run away from the men, but a third man blocked his way.

One of the two men behind the boy raised his wand and stunned the child before it could even scream for help. The third man caught him before he hit the floor and carried him over his shoulder. Then the three of them walked to a dark alley and disappareted.

Petrified, Arabella Figg watched the whole kidnapping from her window feeling completely useless.

When she recovered from the shock, the woman ran at full speed to her fireplace to floo-call the Order.

Harry Potter had been taken by the Death Eaters.