Protective Custody

The first week of the summer holiday ran as per usual for one Harry James Potter of Privet Drive number four, Little Whinging, Surrey, England; young wizard in training, famous – and infamous – boy in a hidden community of magic users, orphan child living under the sufferance of his maternal relatives since he had been slightly beyond a year old…. Well, anyway, the week was ordinary, for Harry: chores, absolutely no mention of magic, more chores, and two letters respectively from his best friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger.

Hermione was starting her family holiday in France, while Ron’s father had won the family a lucky draw at the Daily Prophet and was bringing the whole family to Egypt for the summer.

Harry tried not to be jealous with their familial fun, as he served his own relatives like he imagined Dobby had served the Malfoys.

It all changed in the second week, though. The news of an escape criminal named Sirius Black roaming the community at large heralded a slew of sharp, rapid changes that utterly stunned the soon-to-be thirteen-year-old.

First, on the morning of the beginning of the second week, hours after the news of Sirius Black had been aired, somebody came ringing the door bell of Privet Drive number four. Harry had just finished making breakfast for the Dursleys, at that time, and the only one awake in the house beside him was Aunt Petunia. She ordered him to be out of sight and out of mind in his bedroom, as per usual whenever there was a guest coming, invited or not, so he skedaddled there with all alacrity. Not because he wasn’t interested in whoever at the front door, though, or relished being cooped in what had used to be Dudley’s second bedroom and was still very much a storage area for his cousin’s things. He just didn’t relish being the target of Uncle Vernon’s and Dudley’s ire for being woken up by the door bell… which was ringing again, in the space of just five minutes.

The sounds from downstairs were only murmurs, at the beginning, mostly drowned by the grumblings and thumps coming from the two other occupied bedrooms. Aunt Petunia’s voice soon rose in offence, though, and it attracted Uncle Vernon’s attention. And, perched on his rickety bed in the smallest bedroom of Privet Drive number four, Harry winced, bracing himself up for some unpleasantness soon to be meted out on him, or blamed on him.

And he was indeed called downstairs, barely ten minutes after Uncle Vernon stomped there to join his offended wife.

`Oh well,` he thought resignedly, while shoving his precious two letters into the hidy-hole under the loose floorboard, to join his Invisibility Cloak, photo album, wand and money pouch. “Coming, Aunt Petunia!”

He was met by a stranger at the bottom of the stairs, instead of Aunt Petunia. She was a sharp woman in a sharp office attire, and she greeted him with sharp, assessing gaze that reminded him of McGonagall in a displeased mood.

“Jemima Strides, Mister Potter,” she said shortly on his quizzical look. “Now come. There are many things that we must do this morning.”

Harry followed her to the living room like a puzzled ugly duckling behind his irritated mother.

And, in the destination, before he could even take in his surroundings, he was confronted by a sheaf of paper at the hand of Aunt Petunia, and all that his aunt said on the face of his gobsmacked look was, “Pack your things. Your kind wants you. They said you are a possible target for Black. I say good riddance.”

And, just so, aided by an unspeaking Jemima Strides, the dazed boy packed up the few things he had in his current bedroom including Hedwig’s empty cage, before retrieving his trunk from his former bedroom which was the cupboard under the stairs. He was garbed in his nicest Muggle clothing, too, now; all of course Dudley’s castoffs, thus at least a few sizes larger and already rather shabby, but… nicer than the rest.

He looked back at Privet Drive number four after ducking into the idling car parked outside, having overseen his belongings – the Hogwarts trunk and his backpack – put in the boot of the said car. None of the Dursleys was there to see him off, though, even to throw a last insult at him.

He felt… hollow, nothing, too numb to feel anything else.

He was silent through the ride, and so were his escorts – Jemima Strides who was seated with him at the back and two men in unknown uniform seated in front.

Somehow, he couldn’t muster up any expression, either, when they arrive at the airport, instead of another house or the Leaky Cauldron. The only sign that he registered where he was and how odd it was was his eyes blinking slowly, twice.

He remained mute, too, when Jemima Strides, under the cover of the boot’s door and the back fence of the Airport’s parking lot, switched the contents of his backpack with the clothes stored in the trunk, before getting out a wand from what must be an invisible holster and shrinking the latter plus the cage.

His eyes widened when, after stuffing the miniaturised trunk and cage into the midst of the clothes in the backpack, the woman dropped to an almost kneeling position before him and put her hands on his shoulders. But he found his voice – at long last – after she told him that she would be looking into his former living condition with the Dursleys, and henceforth – at least till “the situation” was resolved – he would be Henry Howard Hammond.

Still, all that he got out was, “Where am I going?”

He hated that his voice croaked and whispered. He hated that he felt too numb and dazed to think of anything else and say anything else because of these whiplash changes to his life, despite all the hair-rising misadventures he had had at Hogwarts.

He hated that he did nothing when he was brought into the back of a neighbouring van and basically made anew: a name only passingly similar to his own, dark-blond hair dye, deep-blue contact lenses, a backpack full of entirely new paperwork and necessities, Muggle concealer for his lightning-bolt scar, and a suitcase full of not only old-seeming new clothes but also a glimpse to a life not of his own. He even got a cover story for “Henry Hammond,” namely that he was a new orphan of a car accident that had killed his parents, now sent to live with his second cousin George Hammond and the latter’s family till he was eighteen. And he didn’t get to keep his things, after all, even his wand, though the people in the van promised to send those to him after they knew very well that all the items were clean of any tampering.

A whisper of a thought passed across the fore of his mind as he found himself seated in a commercial passenger aeroplane headed to Colorado, with Jemima Strides seated beside him: `Is this how a clueless lamb feels when it’s about to be slaughtered?` And still, he did nothing.

He couldn’t do anything; a living puppet riding in the aeroplane, stepping on foreign soil for the first time in his life, meeting his new “family,” riding on the back seat of a car, arriving at a modestly large house with even larger yards to all sides, getting installed in a room that was as large as Dudley’s but far neater and far emtpier….

He was left totally alone only when night came, after a brief shower, an awkward dinner with the Hammonds, a “movie night,” and a novel and embarrassing but secretly cherished bedtime reading with “Cousin Jennifer” – single mother of ten-year-old Andria and six-year-old Kayla, daughter of US Air Force Major General George Hammond. But, contrary to his earlier expectation, vague as it had been, being alone didn’t give him the reprieve that he’d wished for, the return to “normal” that he’d hoped for. In fact, he spent an inordinate amount of time just staring blankly at the unfamiliar ceiling in this unfamiliar place with its unfamiliar sounds and smells and senses.

“Good riddance,” his maternal aunt had said; a blood kin, the living elder sister of his mother, the one who had housed and fed and clothed him for twelve years, if highly reluctantly.

Early in his childhood, he had wished to be accepted by the Dursleys despite all the punishments and chores and belittlement, if there’s nobody else who would take him in. Even when he had been enrolled at Hogwarts and suffered increased persecution from them, he had endured, telling himself that at least he had roof and food and clothes to call his own, however pitiful his portions were. But now….

He wasn’t sure if he could go back to Privet Drive, or if he wanted to do so. “Protective custody,” Jemima Strides had explained to him in the van in her brisk manner, regarding his sudden and speedy departure to be somebody else somewhere else. And if he was to be protected here….

Life could be so funny, sometimes. Uncaring relatives, a mad elf and a basilisk couldn’t push him away from his homeland, from himself, from all familiarity, but this Sirius Black, this unknown criminal….

He shivered.

It seemed that he hated and feared to be alone in a strange place the most, after all.