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"Right!" You've got to keep it simple for Dudley. "What's really important, though, is that magic is a secret, like Harry said. You can't talk about it outside the house, and not even in the house if anyone except me, Harry, or Mum and Dad are here. People get really weird about magic even though it's really cool. It's like having a superhero in the family, you can't tell anyone."

"Harry's a superhero?" Dudley's credulity is clearly straining at this one. Superheros are people like Spiderman and the Hulk. Harry's the poor little shrimp that used to live in the cupboard, who we don't call 'freak' any more on pain of a scolding.

"Will be when he grows up, won't you Harry?" I give Harry a thumbs-up, and he gives me two in return.

"Can I be a superhero?" Dudley's persistent, I'll give him that.

"Well, you can try," I tell him. "Maybe be one like Batman, or James Bond. Do really well at school and train hard. But you can still be great some other way, like if you get really good at footy or rugger like your dad wants you to be?"

Dudley nods at that last bit. I've made superheroing sound quite hard, after all. I just lightly touch his mind and make him feel like keeping magic a secret is really, really important. It won't guarantee he doesn't slip, but the kid needs all the help he can get.

Then it's time to demonstrate the turning-back-into-a-grownup thing. The boys find my dressing in grown-up clothes pretty funny - I'm hoping this stuff will fit, I bought baggy trackies and t-shirts, good enough to go out in to buy stuff in whatever size I turn out to be - and are hugely impressed when I drink a measured dose of Ageing Potion to make myself twenty-five for the next twelve hours.

I'm not unimpressed with the results myself. I get the boys to help with a pencil and a doorframe to discover I'm somewhere around six foot four. I'm used to being a big lad and reasonably fit with it, but this body is built like a brick shithouse. For the first time in my existence, I have visible abs. It's all still a bit squishy, because whatever Harry was visualising when he contributed to the magic that made me, it didn't involve the muscle tone that this level of development should come with. A couple of dozen press-ups with two giggling little boys sat on my back is still pretty easy to do, though.

Over breakfast - a fry-up, which Vernon and Petunia join us for while exchanging looks that go right over the boys' heads but which I have to stay thoroughly poker-faced for - I let the boys know that I'll be out today getting clothes that fit me since I guessed completely wrong, but we can go out and have a bit of an expedition next weekend. And, no, even though I can pretend to be a kid, I'm not coming to school with them.

Once they're off out for some outdoor playtime Vernon's first to confront me. "I don't suppose we have any choice about you living here?" he asks. I'm quite impressed with his new-found ability to moderate his tone. He's got cause to be annoyed at me after all, for all the good I've done him, but he still keeps it within polite bounds. Getting laid for the first time in a couple of years probably didn't hurt.

I'd already decided to show at least a little respect. "In the short term? Not really. There's still a certain amount to do to get things right around here, and I'd have to make other arrangements if you want Harry and me out. Longer term, though, I rather hope to persuade you that it's a good thing to have us around. Dumbledore didn't do anything to help you cope with raising a young wizard, and a few things to hamper you. One of which is tying the defensive spells Lily raised to young Harry, and I'm sorry to say that things are going to get nasty again. Remember all the violence and terrorism of the seventies? A lot of that was wizard criminals, and right now this is one of the safest houses in the country. Which means you want Harry here to help keep Dudley safe, and keeping me here with Harry means the magic side of things is a weight off your mind too." I am going to buy a house nearby - the Lawson Boom hasn't started yet so prices are reasonable. The distant relation who moved nearby is a lot less out of the ordinary than the distant relation who straight-up moved in, after all, and nobody's going to be watching closely enough to be certain where I'm actually living.

He huffs a little over that. "Sort of see your point. Not sure we've got the space, even with that clever tent thing, though. And if we get visitors who're like Pet and can see through things like that, it'll give the game away, won't it?"

I have, as it happens, already thought about that. "Well, you know I've got plenty of money. How do you feel about a loft conversion, my treat? I reckon you can get an extra bedroom or two up there, and it lets us move the tent up out of the box room where people can stumble over it. A fifteen-year lease of the top floor to me at a peppercorn rent, and you get the increased property value when Harry and I move on," Vernon's pretty easy to handle if you've got the wherewithal to bribe him, "and while I'm here you've got a trained lawyer on the premises for all those little hiccups life throws at you, a spare adult for when the boys get boisterous, and a wand for if the magicals make a nuisance of themselves. Plus, you know, I'm a millionaire, which gives me a whole range of other useful capabilities."

He's nodding as I repeat the points I've been making in our dream-therapy sessions. I suspect he's raising objections for form's sake. Probably to re-assert himself with his wife, who he hasn't consciously spoken to in nearly a year, not that they haven't re-made their acquaintance in vigorous fashion this morning. I've been high-handed with him and his family, and I can forgive him for being a bit grumpy about that. Not to the point where I'd actually apologise to either of them, they'd have to be a lot more contrite about the way they treated the boys first, but I'm certainly willing to be understanding about their level of upset. Not least because I've spent most of a year coaching him in how to be angry in a more socially-acceptable way. He might even have a small hope of one day using his anger constructively.

It takes me most of the rest of the week to get a full wardrobe for both my identities bought, not least because as an adult I don't fit standard sizes and it's hard to find options that don't basically involve dressing like a nightclub bouncer. I get the basics and put the bank's concierge service on the lookout for a tailor who's got room on his books for a big lad; given their client base I foresee visits to Savile Row in my immediate future. I'm hampered a bit by the need to not be terribly publicly visible until Petunia has circulated the cover story: a cousin from Harry's side of the family who's finally back in the country after years spent 'working overseas' and staying to 'convalesce' for a while along with his 'nephew' who'll be boarding with the Dursleys while 'dad' is easing back into work and hunting for a house nearby. We go with 'international finance', a subject which I can be convincingly boring about to all but an actual expert, and which does have bizarre working hours and occasional long absences on business trips. Some of which may be genuine, Perenelle has mildly hinted about a job with the investment fund she runs.

If I'm going to do that - as a long-term thing, Harry's welfare is my main concern now - I need to get some qualifications under my belt, which will help build my new identity into the bargain. Mostly that's just booking examinations in material I already know - a handful of O and A levels - and getting a brochure from the Open University to see about a degree. I'm inclining toward mathematics on the basis that that's foundational to the science side of alchemy that I can pick up 'on the job' as I go along, but it's going to be a couple of years before I have to decide as I've got two exam seasons to get through before I can even apply.

-oOo-

It takes a bit of practise, and a few nights spent dreaming like a normal person, but I finally figure out how to get out of my own body. Tom's memories aren't any help, as he wasn't starting from the same place I was, but I'm reassured to discover that having a body of my own hasn't actually changed what I've become since dying. I'm still essentially a spirit, although how that differentiates me from the common run of humanity - luminous beings are we, and all that - is a question for the theologians and other peddlers of metaphysics.

The trick is applying Tom's lessons in lucid dreaming - one of the critical parts of learning Occlumency - so that I can decide to leave while my body is sleeping. It's not something I can do on a whim, unfortunately, so I doubt I'll be able to shed my body like a lizard does its tail in the event of danger. What it does let me do is go back to taking Skriker for walks. It'd be absurd to suggest I've got a pet grim, but we do definitely have an understanding, and he's a good listener while I go over possible plans for the future.

Which is a big deal. I'm going to be making a lot of the bad guys' plans impossible: my mere presence was already a flap of the butterfly's wings, so 'preserving the timeline' is a lost cause even if it wasn't a morally bankrupt course of action. I'm confident that as an Actual Functioning Adult up against the infantilised culture of the wizards I've got plenty of advantages, and in the short term most of what I'll be doing is expanding my capabilities against the day Riddle comes back within reach. If Harry does have to be the one to kill Riddle, I mean for him to do it while I'm holding the bugger down for him.

I'm not really talking much the night after Harry's sixth birthday party; tonight's walk is for decompression. It's the first Saturday in August and 'Uncle Mal' was worn out from running the barbecue for twenty boisterous little kids.

Dropping Skriker off at the graveyard, I apparate - still daren't do it with a body, not until I've had a good deal of practise with a spotter who knows de-splinching spells - back to Privet Drive. I reappear, as I've made my habit, high in the air above the house so as to have one last look around for anything out of the ordinary before going in. I'm more than slightly startled to hear unfamiliar magic being worked somewhere nearby.

Whoever it is, they're invisible, but I can localise the noise of their magic - brassy and ragged, like an overdriven trumpet - to the pavement at the end of the drive. A minute or so's hard staring and I can just see a faint distortion in the air. Whatever they're using to be unseen, it's not quite perfect.

I don't think I ought to let this pass without challenge. "Some might consider that rude," I say, and immediately apparate two paces to my left to hover over the lawn. No sense being in a place I've localised as a target.

The magic stops. There's a long, tense moment of silence. I keep my vision fixed on the spot where I saw the distortion. Whoever it is, isn't moving.

For the moment our mystery visitor isn't doing anything. And hasn't crossed the property line, which I take as a good sign. The obscurity of this address means that the list of people who this could be is quite short not notably criminal. The magic doesn't sound like Dumbledore's, but it's probably someone who knows him. The other group of magicals that know this address is the Special Circumstances team, but they've got the telephone number and would make an appointment during business hours. "Going to introduce yourself?" I ask, moving again as I speak and then apparating straight up ten feet or so. Dodging's so much more effective if you can do it in three dimensions. Not that anyone's shooting yet.

"Are you?" The voice is gravelly, with a hint of Merseyside, and I don't recognise it. With hindsight I should've gone through Tom's memories for known associates of Dumbledore and just put up with the vileness of what he did to the ones he caught.

"I live here," I say, bobbing back to ground level. "And while you're out on the public highway and you've a perfect right to be there, you are casting spells in the vicinity of my home so I'm taking an interest."

That earns me an amused-sounding harrumph. And then, "You this Reynolds character?"

"How I respond to that depends on whether you've been talking to Dumbledore or someone else who knows who lives here."

"Dumbledore. What difference does it make?"

"Well it means I start by asking if he told you his last visit here, he was committing burglary and muggle-baiting? Because that ended with him punched in the face, tied to a chair, and read the riot act about bollocks like that."

"He, ah, didn't put it in exactly those terms." Definitely Merseyside. They have a way of saying 'exactly' that's unique.

"Surprising," I say, "you'd think admitting burglarly'd establish a rapport with a scouser."

Another rumble of amusement. "I'm from Wallasey, as it happens."

"The difference is only a long hole in the ground," I tell him.

"To a woollyback, maybe." Not up to the usual standards of scouse chat, but it is a tense situation.

"Yeah, well, we all know why the Mersey runs between the Wirral and Liverpool. If it walked, some thieving scouse git'd rob it." The joke's a time-honoured one, and traditional in these circumstances. "Look, are we going to stand here all night bantering, or what? Because you're not going to get through the magical defences on this place, the witch who put 'em up was a genius."

"Dumbledore got in, according to you," mystery voice observes, "and he reckons he put up the defences on this place."

"Nah, all he did was monkey with 'em, for purposes he's not shared with anyone else. I'm pretty sure he didn't know what he was messing with, either. At least I hope he didn't, because otherwise we've got a wizard runnin' about with all that power and no common sense at all. He's lucky he didn't wipe half of Surrey off the map, it's seriously old and powerful stuff and as far as I can tell all but forgotten by mainstream wizardry. But anyway, he crossed the property line but the 'confusion to the enemy' part of the defence meant he came on like a complete idiot and got a smack in the teeth for his trouble. And, you know, still not hearing an introduction. Sorry to mither, like."

He harrumphs. "Name's Moody. Auror. And you're right, I noticed something was affecting my thinking from shortly after I took this job on, which is why I spent more time in surveillance and checking the paperwork than even my normal thorough practice. Anyway, reason I followed up is the suspicion Dumbledore raised about dark activity on your part. Serious allegation, that."

"From a burglar and muggle-baiter. You know, I had a lot of reasons to think poorly of Dumbledore, but I didn't think he'd be petty." I'm really pleased to make this man's acquaintance. In the books he was the one character with something like common sense. Magic is dangerous, magical criminals doubly so, and what everyone around him calls paranoia I call an appropriate response to the circumstances. I've got to be extremely careful how I do it, but getting this man on-side will be a massive asset. I'm willing to tolerate a great deal of roughness of manner in exchange for the one wizard with his head screwed on tight. Cross-threaded, mind, but tight.

"Not a denial," he says.

"Not a credible allegation, no need for a denial. Anyway, I'm going to go visible now, since someone has to go first. To your front." I drop my occlumency so I become visible. "As you see, I'm incorporeal and as such not actually a threat." There are spells that can affect ghosts which Moody probably knows - I know them via Tom, but can't cast them yet - so I'm taking a small risk here. The upside is that I'm not actually a ghost so those spells might not work, and I'm a lot faster than any corporeal target. My ability to dodge includes 'a thousand feet straight up in an eyeblink', which I've actually drilled on.

"You said you punched Dumbledore in the face. Hard to do that as a ghost."

"I'm not a ghost, and the muggle chap who owns this place did the thumping while I protected him from Dumbledore's magical attack. My actual body is indoors getting a good night's kip."

"What?"

"Yeah, it's a bit of a story. Which, sorry, not telling out here on the street in the small hours without verifying your identity. Let me see it's you, your description is pretty distinctive, and we can talk more. Maybe, if we can figure out how I can verify your identity, we can talk about you coming back during the day with guest-right?" It's an old magic, the binding of guest and host, and one not lightly crossed by a wizard with more common sense than a potted geranium, especially if enacted in the old and proper forms. One of the rare magical contracts that cannot be imposed without mutual consent, and strong enough that the ancient Greeks credited the enforcement of it to Zeus in his capacity as ruler of heaven. The entire Iliad was about a war started by violation of guest-right. It wouldn't stop Moody making an arrest, but it does mean that any arrest he might make must be strictly according to law and backed by a solid case-to-answer.

He drops the hood of his invisibility cloak - one-handed, he has a wand trained on me the whole time, sensible - and holy shit is his face a mess. As I'm coming to expect of my time in this universe, he looks nothing like his movie actor, although the overall build is about right. For all I know, he could be the dead spit of Brendan Gleeson under all the mutilation.

"They don't teach you how to duck in Auror school, then?" I ask, hoping to lighten the mood.

"Sometimes taking a hit's the price of doing business," he says. "You mentioned guest-right? Not like I can't come back with a warrant."

"Well, you can, but if Dumbledore briefed you properly you know why you shouldn't. The point I'm driving at is that I reckon I have a lot in common with Alastor Moody, Auror of Repute, as regards the outcome of the last war and the unfinished business thereof. The problem, as I see it, is building a working relationship from absolute flat nothing and I don't see the real Moody, from all I hear of him, respecting me at all if I just take your word for you being who you say you are."

He chuckles. It sort of whistles through the rent in his nose. "And if Dumbledore is to be believed, you're not going to be exactly accommodating with an Auror whose job is hunting the likes of you."

I've no idea if an eyeroll comes across in my glowy-man-shaped-blob form, but I give it a go anyway. "It's at moments like these I regret that without a throat I can't give a good, loud harrumph. While I'm not read in on every last detail of your professional brief as an auror, hunting down spirits just for being spirits ain't part of it, or there'd be a lot fewer of the regular sort of ghost."

"I got told you were possessing a muggle."

"Which isn't actually illegal, and since he benefited by it, you can't really call it dark either. Be that as it may, what I did stopped two children from suffering from neglect and abuse, so even if you insist on calling it dark magic, it's not unforgivable and done in proportionate and lawful defence of others. Which is a defence known to wizarding law, I checked. If you were able to open an official investigation here, it'd end with you writing it up as no crime committed, or whatever the Auror equivalent reporting category is."

His eponymous Mad Eye stops in its local radar sweep and starts scanning the house. "Got to say the kids in there look pretty healthy to me."

"After a year of intervention, yes. Although one of 'em's me, and that body's brand new, it'd be a rum do if it wasn't in good nick. And abuse is more'n just beatings, you know. They were keeping one of those boys, the important one if Dumbledore was keeping track of which is arse and which is elbow, in near constant solitary confinement in the cupboard under the stairs."

"Let's just say, hypothetical-like, I was to accept guest-right, which if I accept it by name does verify my identity. What would we have to talk about over a cup of tea?"

"Well, we'd talk about you learning to use a telephone and making an appointment to come at a civilised hour, for one thing. If I let you in at this time of night and you wake up the Dursleys, well, Vernon has it in his head that punching wizards is fun. He stuck one on Dumbledore and hasn't shut up about it since."

"Be awkward, if nothing else," Moody agrees, visibly amused. Whether that's just on general principles of a wizard of Dumbledore's puissance getting thumped by a muggle or because he has current beef with the man I do rather wonder. "This Vernon'd be the man of the house, then? He'd be the one to grant guest-right?"

"He would, which is the other reason I can't do it right now. Although as I recall the house is in their joint names so Petunia could invite you in too. Be better coming from her, she's a squib so the magic'd hear her better, and the Land Registry will confirm that for you." Truth be told, I had assumed I could do it myself, but Moody has correctly pointed out the flaw.

He nods. "And as a resident here, you'd be bound too. Bit curious about one thing, though. You told Dumbledore you were dead, but you've got a living body now? How's that come to be? Magic can't bring back the dead, it's one o' them things everyone knows."

"Be more accurate to say that magic can't bring back the dead and gone. I was dead, but not gone. Not so much properly dead as inconveniently discorporated, I got some help from alchemists. How well it works as a long-term solution remains to be seen, of course, but I'm quietly confident."

"So this'd work with ordinary ghosts?"

That's a sharp insight, and it takes me aback for a moment. "Huh. I hadn't thought of that. It actually might, but I can't think of how off hand. Most ghosts can't possess the living, they've only just got enough magic to manifest, nothing more. Just speculating, here, but the ghost'd probably come back as a squib at most if they were magical when they were alive. Might be something to try if we can find a ghost who'll volunteer knowing that risk. Preferably one who's recently deceased so - sorry, that was an interesting thought, and I've been thinking hard about uses for the process lately. Mainly whole-body transplants for the seriously crippled, but the soul transference is a seriously difficult problem, and all of the approaches I've found in the literature so far have major ethical problems."

Moody's openly laughing at me. "If you end up going to Hogwarts like Dumbledore says, you're a dead cert for Ravenclaw. And mind you keep your eye on those ethical problems."

"I surely will." Although not sure about the Ravenclaw crack, since scholarship is a means to an end for me and has been for a long time. If I'd been sorted at eleven or twenty? Different story. "Now, back to you coming back for a chat. I've put a lot of my cards on the table, how about you?"

"Well, Dumbledore asked me to look into what you were doing. I reckon I went a bit further than he was expecting, and found all the records you turn up in on the muggle side. That led me to here, and, well, long story short, who that kid is up there in the magical tent in the smallest bedroom. Went and had a look at the court records for him, and that led me to Coutts and a lad who was in Hufflepuff a few years behind me. Nice bloke. Told me he couldn't say anything what with client confidentiality, but if he had a client's permission he could give a glowing reference."

I'm going to have a word with Huw. Bankers' confidentiality isn't nearly as absolute as the standard I hewed to as a lawyer, but he's still crossed a line. It's worked out to my benefit this time, but there's a proper protocol to these things and it starts with getting the client's permission, before which you neither confirm nor deny. However, Moody's the one in front of me. "You mention Dumbledore to Huw?"

"I didn't, as it happens. Should I have?"

"You had no reason to, and Huw was over the line as it was, don't think I won't be pinning his ears back over it, but his team found the evidence of Dumbledore's cockups that's the other reason he's sent you after me with only half a story. When we were reading him the riot act that came up too. I'll certainly authorise Huw to copy you with that file."

"We've a lot to talk about, then," Moody says. "Give me the telephone number and I'll call later this morning about a convenient time to come and talk to the Dursleys and, after that, have a long chat with you."

AUTHOR NOTES

Anyone want to bet that Riddle would be the sort that thought of love of country as mawkish sentimentality that nobody sensible had any part of, never mind cognoscenti like his magnificent self?

Anyway, there really is a solid historical record of invasion attempts of the British Isles being marked by incompetence and misfortune - Britain doesn't so much win against invaders as have them lose at us - and if there was any king of the English who was a wizard, it was Alfred the Great, who had mind-trick level powers of persuasion against his kingdom's enemies. The invasions that worked - 1066, 1135 and 1688 - were made by people who had an arguable claim on the throne, making them more like coups, and two of the three didn't even bring much of an army when they came. And since the magic is a protection of the realm first enacted in the teeth of the Danish invasion, it has a blind spot where civil wars and coups are concerned, but it does treat post-secrecy magical Britain as a foreign power.

It's not the only way to make sense of the protective magic around Number Four, but it's the one I've picked. And, of course, sacrificially-powered protective magic is something we know Lily Potter was read up on, so that's how she protected Harry personally. James's role is obscure: his valiant death may have been a part of the ritual, or simple courage to the last. We may never know.

The Open University is the UK's distance-learning institution of choice, and has been since 1971 when it was founded. If you don't give a stuff about the prestige of the institution or the undergraduate experience and just want to learn the material, it's hard to beat.

Geographical note: Merseyside, the urban area either side of the mouth of the Mersey, has Liverpool to the north and the Wirral - where Wallasey is - to the south of the river. They're connected by the Mersey tunnels. And unless you're really dialled in on the accents, they inhabitants are all a lot of bloody scousers. (I'm on both sides of the mutual pisstaking between Merseyside and the rest of Lancashire, because I was born in Liverpool although moved away early enough that I didn't pick up the accent.)

I stand by what I say about Moody. The Magical world is, in a lot of places, a very nasty place where paranoia is straight-up common sense. We only really get to know him from the acting performance Barty Crouch jr. delivers and the jokes others make about him: the couple of times he appears in his own right he seems like a lot less of a caricature. I've gone with a characterisation that is actually functionally paranoid, which means he does all the investigative legwork and can be reasoned with. But keep your hands where he can see them and don't make any sudden movements.

Finally, the Riot Act was the authorisation to use lethal force (and hang any taken alive) against any gathering of more than 12 persons, starting one hour after the Act was read aloud in their presence. Repealed in 1967, it survives as a figure of speech for either 'final warning' or 'epic bollocking' and usually both.

Fanfic recommendation: Lust Over Pendle, the only slash story I ever really got on with. It pre-dates the later books considerably, so it's AU from the end of Goblet of Fire onward, but the world-building is beautiful. It's not on any of the standard fanfic sites, but a google search for it brings it up handily.