Departing the Dursleys
“Middle Aged woman who lived alone, by the name of Ameila Bones, was found murdered this morning in a room locked from the inside. Police are baffled -”
Still listening to the report, Harry slowly carried his trunk and Hedwig’s empty cage down the staircase of Number Four Privet Drive. The name Amelia Bones was known to him. She worked at the Ministry in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement and was currently deeply involved in the case of exonerating Sirius Black - only now she was dead.
“Ameila Bones was a witch,” Harry blurted out before he could stop himself, coming into the living room where his aunt and uncle were watching the news on television. “Lord Voldemort is behind that murder - I know he is.”
He ignored Uncle Vernon’s snort of annoyance and the way Aunt Petunia had pursed her lips in agitation at the sound of his voice. Harry was too used to this by now to be bothered by it.
The first two weeks of summer had positively dragged on and he had spent most of it up in his bedroom avoiding the Dursleys as much as he could. However, he did register dimly how strange it was that the Dursleys, who flinched, winced, and squawked if they heard words like “wizard”, “magic,” or “wand”, could heard the name of the most evil wizard of all time without a tremor.
“Vol - hang on,” said Uncle Vernon, his face screwed up, a look of dawning comprehension in his piggy eyes. “I've heard that name…that was the one who…”
“Murdered my parents, yes,” said Harry.
“But he's gone,” said Uncle Vernon impatiently, without the slightest sign that the murder of Harry’s parents might be a painful topic to anybody. “That giant bloke said so. He’s gone.”
“He’s back,” said Harry heavily.
“Back?” whispered Aunt Petunia.
She was looking at Harry as she had never looked at him before. And all of a sudden, Harry was reminded of what Professor Snape had told him last summer about how his aunt had once desired nothing more than to enter the Wizarding World and had convinced herself that magic was something to be despised in order to recover from her disappointment. He was not the only person in the room who had an inkling of what Lord Voldemort being back would mean. Aunt Petunia had never in her life looked at him like that before. Her large, pale eyes (so unlike her sister’s) were not narrowed in dislike or anger: They were wide and fearful. The furious pretense that Aunt Petunia had maintained all Harry’s life - that there was no magic and no world other than the world she inhabited with Uncle Vernon - seemed to have fallen away.
“Yes,” Harry said, talking directly to Aunt Petunia now. “He came back last year. I saw him.”
“Well then,” said Uncle Vernon, looking from his wife to Harry and back again, apparently dazed and confused by the unprecedented understanding that seemed to have sprung up between them. “All the more reason to get you out of here before we wind up like that ourselves - when are you leaving?”
“Soon,” Harry replied, sinking down on the carpet to watch the news with them while he waited.
Greeting the Dursleys at the beginning of the summer with the announcement that Sirius was seeking to adopt him had been met with much celebration. His aunt and uncle had been behaving as though Christmas had come early ever since but Harry was not offended - he felt the exact same way.
“Professor Snape wrote to me this morning to say he’d be arriving around seven,” he reminded them, which had been enough to persuade Dudley to leave the house for the evening. “He’ll have papers for both of you to sign.”
“That won’t be a problem,” said Uncle Vernon happily, rubbing his fat hands together.
Beside him, Aunt Petunia still looked rather shaken. She had been upset about Snape’s coming to Privet Drive for days but the prospect of getting rid of Harry for good had gotten both of the Dursleys to agree to this meeting. Harry knew that wasn’t what was bothering her right now though.
“That wasn’t a real hurricane either,” Harry pointed out a few minutes later, “it’s giants. Voldemort recruited them to -”
“Be quiet,” Aunt Petunia snapped, “that’s enough.”
Harry balled his hands into fists and pressed his lips together. He consoled himself with reminders that this part of his life was nearly over. As a little boy, he had dreamed and dreamed about some unknown relation coming to take him away from the Dursleys and it had never happened until now.
When the doorbell finally rang, Harry was on his feet and racing towards it before anyone could stop him. He swung the door open and was surprised by the unexpected sight of his Transfiguration teacher standing where Professor Snape should have been.
“Professor McGongagall?”
She didn't look like herself either. Dressed in a navy blue skirt with stockings, black ankle boots, and a smart blazer - she reminded Harry of a muggle lawyer, with a large file poking out of her handbag. Harry hadn’t seen her since he and the other fifth years had witnessed her attack from the Astronomy Tower. Though she was using a walking stick, Harry thought she seemed in quite good form after over a month at St. Mungo’s Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries.
“Aren’t you going to invite me in, Potter?” Professor McGonagall said briskly. “It isn’t wise to linger on doorsteps these days and I thought you’d be eager to get going.”
Harry quickly swung the door open to its full capacity and Professor McGonagall stepped inside. She leaned heavily on her walking stick while she slipped both of her boots off one at a time. Her stocking clad feet looked unusual to Harry as he led her down the hallway, but he knew Aunt Petunia would appreciate the respect shown to her pristinely kept floors.
“Where’s Professor Snape?” Harry asked.
“I don’t really know, Potter - he just asked me to escort you to Grimmauld Place for him.”
Harry took this to mean that he was with Voldemort - but Sirius had told him in a carefully coded letter that he had hardly seen Snape at all that summer.
Death Eater activity was overtaking London now that Voldemort had come out of hiding. The Dark Mark appeared in the sky almost nightly, wherever they struck - inciting fear in every soul. Even the muggles had noticed that something was wrong and the gloomy weather was not helping with morale either. The Dementors were responsible for the misty summer they'd been enduring - having abandoned Azkaban to breed throughout the country as they fed on the plentiful feast of despair.
“I’m Minerva McGonagall,” said Professor McGonagall, after slowly and with difficulty lowering herself into the chair across from them.
Neither of the Dursleys made any show of introducing themselves, but Professor McGonagall did not seem to expect any more from them.
“Don’t loiter in the hallway, Potter,” she ordered, pulling his adoption papers out of her purse which had the emblem of the Ministry of Magic printed at the top. “You’re to sign these as well.”
Professor McGonagall gave him a small smile as she handed him a quill and showed him where to put his signature - right beneath the line where Sirius had already signed his name. The home and the family that Sirius had offered him the first night that they met was truly coming to fruition. Once these papers were approved at the Ministry and Sirius was granted the official pardon that was expected to come through any time now, Harry would have a recognized father in the world again.
“This is the first time we are meeting even though I have taught your nephew and been his head of house for the past five years,” Professor McGonagall said to the Dursleys coldly, when Harry handed her back her quill. “You have disregarded all my offers for interviews and ignored any of my attempts to involve you in your nephew’s education.”
“We don’t engage in that sort of riff raff,” Uncle Vernon snarled.
But it was news to Harry that they had ever been contacted about him at all - aside from the time back in second year when Professor McGonagall had written to inform them about him and Ron flying Mr Weasley’s Ford Anglia to school and crashing it into the Whomping Willow. If they’d bothered to open the letter at all, Harry knew that they would have only been disappointed that the tree hadn’t crushed them.
“You’ve made what you will and won’t engage with perfectly clear,” Professor McGonagall said curtly, “and I will not leave here without saying this - if your situation had been reversed - if Lily had been tasked with the care of your child, Petunia - she never would have treated him the way that you’ve treated Harry. I hope that sits with you for a very long time.”
Harry might have imagined it but he thought Aunt Petunia’s complexion had paled at these words, but Uncle Vernon’s complexion was beginning to change to an ugly shade of purple.
“Just give me the ruddy form and I’ll sign,” he grumbled.
“Certainly,” said Professor McGonagall, smacking the pages down on the coffee table between them with disgust. “Usually I would recommend someone read a document thoroughly before signing, but you seem to know what you’re doing."
The vein in Uncle Vernon’s forehead was throbbing as he grabbed the forms and used his own ballpoint pen to write his name. He seemed untypically reluctant to argue - perhaps it was the muggle attire that Professor McGonagall was wearing or his satisfaction at finally getting Harry out of his house that was keeping his temper at bay.
Aunt Petunia signed her own name once Uncle Vernon was finished and handed the pages back to Professor McGonagall. “The adoption of your nephew to Sirius Black should be finalized in a few days. After that, your financial and legal responsibilities to your nephew will officially cease.
Uncle Vernon muttered something rude under his breath, but Harry couldn’t have cared less. He was free! He was going to live with Sirius. He was never going to have to follow any of the Dursleys stupid rules again. He was so happy that he uttered a hurried goodbye and was already waiting eagerly at the door with his trunk and owl cage when Professor McGonagall emerged slowly from the living room.
“I don’t know if anyone ever told you before, Potter,” she said, as she slowly slipped her feet back into her low-heeled ankle boots, “but I was here on the night that Professor Dumbledore left you on this doorstep. I tried to change his mind - I told him that your aunt and uncle were the worst sort of muggles imaginable.”
“Well, you weren’t wrong, Professor.”
“No, sadly, I was correct about that.”
She used her wand to shrink his trunk and Hedwig’s cage for him. Then she slipped her wand back into her handbag and Harry pocketed his shrunken belongings.
“I quite enjoy getting to be the one to take you away from here, Potter. It’s something that I wish I could have done a long time ago.”
XXXX
Severus had fought the temptation to collect Harry early from Privet Drive the entire summer holiday. Mostly because he knew better than to go against Dumbledore’s wishes and because he understood himself just how crucial these couple weeks in the company of Petunia Dursley were for Harry’s protection. However, it was difficult to reckon with how miserable he knew Harry had to be at the moment. Severus had been looking forward to escorting him to Grimmauld Place and found it tremendously frustrating to be delayed now that he finally could. However, he had no intention of walking away from where he felt he was more needed right now.
“It was only yesterday and Draco seemed almost proud when he showed me,” Narcissa was saying sadly, looking at Severus through watery eyes the colour of crystals.
She had just finished telling him about her son being branded a Death Eater - the Dark Mark burned into his arm before Draco had even reached his seventeenth birthday. A tear trickled down Narcissa’s cheek and she was so pale that she appeared to be glowing in the dark living room in Spinner’s End with heavy drapes pulled over the windows.
“Well, how would you rather Draco react?” Severus asked her quietly.
It pained and disappointed him tremendously to learn this about Draco. He must be so scared - wondering what was to come now. Severus would never forget how it had felt to be marked in such a way himself. How much it had hurt and how the permanency had frightened him when he’d been too young to really even know what he was getting himself into - but he didn’t share any of those thoughts with Narcissa.
Her tears had only become more pronounced and Severus traced the back of her hand absentmindedly, while he struggled to find words to console a woman blindsided by something that he thought should have been obvious. Being comforting had never exactly been a strength of his and he had run out of things to say to her several hours ago.
As Narcissa clung to him, Severus glanced up at the clock again for the third time in the quarter of an hour. Having discreetly sent Minerva McGonagall a message earlier to collect Harry in his place, he was curious to know if they’d reached Headquarters yet or not.
“Do you have to go somewhere?” Narcissa whispered, her head resting against his chest.
Severus hesitated, gently brushing the tears from her face.
“You probably should get back before you’re missed,” he told her softly, “and Dumbledore is expecting me.”
He felt Narcissa’s whole body tense against him at the mention of the Headmaster’s name - reinforcing to Severus that they would never be on the same side again. Narcissa was so trusting of him and it made Severus feel almost guilty to really be working against her. She had bared everything to him tonight and Severus would use that against her in an instant if necessary. Even doing the right thing wasn’t morally simple - all of it was grey.
“Just a little longer,” Narcissa pleaded, pressing her soft elegant hand against the dry callouses of his. “Who cares what that muggle loving fool wants? Tell him any excuse and I have no doubt that he will buy it.”
“Okay,” Severus agreed after a small pause.
He disentangled himself from her enough to lean forward to pick up the open bottle of wine on the coffee table. Silently he poured more of the amber liquid into each of their glasses. Then he placed the one that was smeared with lipstick around the rim back into Narcissa’s hand. They had already polished off a bottle which lay on the floor, having accidentally been knocked over by one of them earlier.
“The Dark Lord,” he raised his drink in toast.
Narcissa copied him, clinking her glass with his before she took a small sip. Severus watched her wipe the crimson stain from her mouth. Then she settled deeper against him and he didn’t mind.
This wasn’t Narcissa’s first visit to Spinner’s End, but she had never been this upset before. Not even when Lucius had been sent to Azkban or at the beginning of the summer holiday when she had worried about Voldemort taking special interest in Draco.
Being the old friends that they were, it seemed only natural that she and Severus would seek out each other this way from time to time when the whole world seemed to be falling apart. Narcissa was the only woman that Severus had ever been with and the only reason it had even gotten this far was because he knew a married woman would be discreet and ask nothing of him once it was over.
“Can you speak for Draco?” she asked quietly. “The Dark Lord might listen to you. He’s just a boy, Severus.”
“Precisely. He is just a boy,” Severus said calmly. “Do you really think that the Dark Lord is going to ask so much of an unqualified wizard who hasn’t even finished school? Of course not. You’re wasting all this energy worrying about nothing.”
“He told Draco that he expects great things from him,” Narcissa’s voice cracked, and when she brought her glass back to her lips Severus saw that her arm was shaking.
“As the son of a Death Eater, this was always going to be your son’s path, Narcissa,” Severus said quietly. “You need to get a grip on yourself. What if the Dark Lord knew of your reaction to this honour?”
“Now you sound like Bella,” Narcissa murmured, “but I don’t care which side wins if my son is at risk.”
“Bellatrix will not tolerate slander of the Dark Lord, and nor will I,” Severus said coolly, “you need to think about what you’re saying before you say it in front of the wrong person.”
Narcissa shook her head and her pale blonde hair tickled the side of his neck.
“This is a safe house,” she told him. “There’s nobody here besides the two of us.”
“Lucius won’t be gone forever,” Severus said, unable to resist stroking his hand through her silky hair one more time. “I strongly believe that they will all be recovered from Azkaban before long. Draco isn’t going to have to do anything. The Dark Lord is just playing with him right now in his father’s absence.”
“A cruel game,” she whispered, “but he’s still given him the mark that only those closest to him are to receive.”
“Then you should know how highly the Dark Lord thinks of him - of your whole family,” Severus replied. “As Draco’s mother, you must find it within yourself to at least pretend to be pleased - Draco is doing his duty and he understands what is expected of him.”
“Does he?” Narcissa’s voice was laced with doubt.
“Yes, he does,” Severus said firmly. “He’s only acting arrogant because he’s trying to disguise from you just how afraid he is - but he and I have talked at length about this together at Hogwarts. He’s seen pain and witnessed pure terror. He knows what the Dark Lord is capable of - he’s not just your child anymore, Narcissa. He knows way too much.”
He didn’t add that he now personally understood her struggle - the instinct to want to be there and somehow make the unavoidable go away for your child. Severus couldn’t eliminate the prophecy that marked Harry’s destiny any more than Narcissa could erase the Dark Mark from Draco’s arm. There was so much that was out of Severus’s hands - Including the fate of friends he cared about, who happened to be on the side Severus was secretly working to destroy.
“I won’t let anything happen to your son,” Severus reminded her softly, and he meant it even as he wondered how he could possibly keep that promise.
He couldn’t pull Draco back or even be honest with him. It was impossible to prevent a young boy from making the same mistakes he had to pretend he wasn’t sorry to have made himself - but he had cared for Draco as his Head of House for the past five years and was indebted to both his father and mother. Severus would do whatever he could for him.