Chapter 13: Just as we start making progress

DISCLAIMER: Was nothing the Dursleys did in the books ever visibly hallowed by any order of the Family Division of the High Court without any of the legal consequences thereof in any way ensuing? If so, I don't own Harry Potter.

CHAPTER 13

I put it aside for future study, adding another item to my rapidly-growing note-to-self list. For now - we're a few weeks into the '86/'87 fiscal year - I've got preparations for the body-growing procedure to look after and, more importantly, Harry's guardianship hearing to get him prepared for.

Not that he needs to know anything, just that it's going to seem like a very big deal to a kid his age and it would be remiss not to ensure he understands all of it that he can within his present limits.

-oOo-

"It's a bit boring."

"I know, Harry, I know. The thing is, there's lots of people who need decisions from the judge, but only four judges here today, so there's a queue." Which is not exactly how court lists work, but close enough for five-and-a-half.

I had thought that having got out of litigation, gone on to retire, and then actually die that I had seen my last long wait in a grotty County Court waiting room amid a crowd of bored junior advocates and nervous clients and witnesses. Guildford County Court had an odd mix of memories for me: I ended up going there a lot as a trainee, and it was the venue of my first win as an advocate. It was also the scene of dozens of hours of getting faffed about by clients and court staff, standing waiting for a case that could come on at any moment but invariably didn't, getting my lunch out of vending machines and actually hoping for someone to go doolally from the stress and kick off because at least it'd be entertaining to watch. It's not quite as dismal as I remember - when I was-will-be-curse-these-trime-travel-tenses there it had had another ten years of anxiety soaked into its 1960s Municipal Brutalist concrete - but it's still about as much fun as persistent rectal itching.

Bright side: Harry's never had a vending machine lunch before, so to him it's going to be an adventure rather than, as it generally was for me, a reason to regret the whole "fuck it, I'm going to be a lawyer" decision. (I had originally wanted to be a bomber pilot, but my eyesight wasn't good enough.)

"Why does the judge have to decide?"

"Well, when there's an argument, the judge's job is to decide who's right. Or, at least, who's not as wrong as the other fellow, sometimes arguments are really, really stupid. And when there's children involved, like you, sometimes people make silly decisions, so the judge checks everyone's decisions to make sure they're the right ones."

"Oh. How do you get to be a judge?"

"Well, you see all the people with great big wodges of paper in their arms?" I point out a few; the blue-covered counsels' notebooks are distinctive. "They're lawyers, their job is to know the law and help people like us in places like this. When they've been doing it for years and years and years they know loads of law and how it all works, and they can apply for a job as a judge. Which is why the judge is almost certainly someone's granddad or grandma, it takes a long time to learn enough law to be a judge."

"Where were you when I was doing my Law Society Finals, Mr. Dursley? That's a better explanation than I ever got from my Civil Procedure lecturer." It's our advocate for the day: Harry's case is straightforward enough that not only does the solicitor I retained for Harry not feel the need to retain a barrister, but he's sent along one of his articled clerks to get some experience.

Fuckin' 'ell, did I ever look that green? I'd been warned ahead of time, and of course I know the score here a lot better than young Mr. Elphick does, but it makes me wonder what some of the clients must've thought when they saw me wander in with an armful of pleadings and a faceful of the reminders of teenage acne.

"Well, Harry needs to understand what's going on, so I read up ahead of time. Another lesson for you there, Harry. Be prepared."

Harry's taking it all in, of course. Bit shy around the chap he doesn't know yet, but not visibly intimidated the way some kids get.

Elphick has news: "we're on next, and from what I understand the case that's in now is as straightforward as Harry's, so it shouldn't be long."

He's not wrong. We're in court fifteen minutes - and four requests from Harry for help with hard words in his book - later.

The District Judge's chambers are exactly like every other such room furnished by the Lord Chancellor's Department. The judge's desk with the advocate's table pushed right up against it and a row of three seats at the back of the room. The whole thing is over in ten minutes: Harry's court-appointed Guardian ad litem - I've not even bothered remembering the man's name, he's just whoever was next on Surrey County Council's list of solicitors available to do the work - notes that the social worker's report discloses no problems (her visit had lasted all of twenty minutes according to Petunia, and from a peek at her memories of the event would probably have missed it if Harry had still been under the stairs), that Harry is doing well at school and that he's happy to be where he is. Nobody has noticed that this is a recent development.

I've given everyone to understand that Harry has been told his parents died in a road traffic accident, because the official story is that his parents just dropped off the face of the earth and we can't find them, and having regard to Harry being present in court today the Guardian draws the judge's attention to the relevant part of the hearing bundle where the private inquiry agent lists all the reasons why James and Lily can be safely presumed dead unless they turn up alive in the next two and a bit years. An actual death certificate is going to have to await a separate set of proceedings: at less than five years we're a bit previous on having the Potters declared legally dead. Seven years is traditional, but not required, but four-and-a-bit years is probably not enough. The Act of Parliament that fixes the seven year period in law won't be passed until the twenty-teens some time.

While that puts a stopper on tracing and managing any assets the Potters might have had in the muggle world, we're less constrained on the magical side. For now, though, Elphick is explaining that there's a modest sum held in a savings account intended for Harry's school fees and university, and that it requires management now that I'm going to be making the payments. He tells the judge Vernon Dursley, of course, but it's going to be me. Coutts isn't quite the name to conjure with that Rhys thinks it is, but they've got a good enough reputation that I barely have to nudge the judge's mind into not asking any probing questions.

"Now," the judge says once both advocates have made their representations, "we have the young man himself in chambers today, do we not? Harry, would you come forward, please."

I have to nudge Harry a bit, and he grabs my hand so I have to go with him.

"I'm sure this must all seem terribly boring to you, am I right?"

Harry looks up at me and I give him a small nod. "A bit, sir, yes." Oh good, he's remembered the proper form of address.

"I see you brought a book to read? Can you tell me what it's about?"

"Ancient Egypt, sir. Uncle told me a silly story about pyramids and I want to learn the true one." It's the Ladybird History series book on Ancient Egypt. Which does have a bit in it about the Pyramids as you'd expect.

"Your Uncle told you about camels, then?" The judge says. He's clearly got kids of his own, if he knows the story about camels, although he doesn't look quite old enough to be a granddad yet.

Harry's tone turns indignant. "He did, and what he said was silly. I saw a camel at the zoo, an' I saw when it did a poo and it wasn't a triangular brick."

Elphick and the guy-whose-name-I-still-can't-remember both have to turn away. Elphick's wheezing laughter isn't quite inaudible.

Mister District Judge Sir has an admirable poker face, however. "Well I never. And all this time I thought camels were how Egypt got its pyramids. And you say your book says something different?"

Harry nods.

As do I. I adopt a pose of exaggerated innocence. "Harry has been very motivated to learn to read so as to prove me wrong, sir. I, too, was dismayed to learn that everything I knew about camels was wrong."

"Well, learning is important. Keep it up, Harry. Are you happy to keep living with your Aunt and Uncle?"

Harry nods vigorously.

"I'll take that as a yes. You can sit down if you like, Harry, or you can stay while I and these two gentlemen decide on the right words for the order making that official."

The rest is the ordinary back-and-forth of submissions-in-chambers, and we can expect the formal sealed order within a week. Getting Harry's affairs squared away is very nearly done.

-oOo-

"Huw," I say, shaking his hand as he greets me in the bank's lobby, "good to see you again. Are we talking about Harry or me today?"

"A little of you, and a lot of Harry, and not all of it terribly good, I'm afraid. Step into the conference room here, we already have tea for you, and I'll go over what our Trustee people have found out."

That sounds ominous indeed. He says no more until we've got tea and biscuits in front of us.

"Right," Rhys says, "I felt I had to call you in to meet because, frankly, it's all a bit of a mess. All young Harry has in the world is, basically, money, and I'm afraid that while everything that was done to bring the Potters' estate to that point was legal, there has been very definite sharp practise."

I don't know why I was content to assume that all Harry was left by his parents was a vault full of gold. I did, in theory, pass Inheritance and Probate all those years ago - it wasn't even one of the exams I turned up hungover for - and it's unusual to say the least to have an estate that consists entirely of cash in the bank. "Do we know who the executor was, at least?"

"No executor. If the Potters left wills, they never surfaced. Which seems a little fishy to me."

I rock a hand to express my ambivalence. "Intestacy's a lot more common than most people suppose, especially among the under forties. Still, at least there'd be an administrator?"

"The Office of the Seventh Clerk is the Ministry of Magic office that deals with it. No idea why it's called that -"

"Actually, this is one I do actually know. The forerunner of the Official Solicitor and the Public Trustee was the Office of the Six Clerks in Chancery. Got disbanded for corruption in the 19th Century some time and replaced with the modern versions. Clearly the wizarding world had their own seventh clerk. It's not often I get to trot out my collection of obscure legal history trivia, so when the opportunity comes along I pounce." I can also see the way that this story is heading. "Would I be right in guessing that the Clerk himself had a surname that features prominently in Nature's Nobility?" That book is the wizarding world's answer to Burke's Peerage, print-the-legend approach to genealogy and all, and it has become shorthand between us for a lot of jokes about the narrow-horizoned yokels of the wizarding world.

"I'd call you a cynic, but you're nearly right, you only got the gender wrong. Servilia Avery. Related closely enough to share a surname with one poor unfortunate victim of the Imperius Curse, second cousin once removed to the Octavian Avery who is currently at liberty after proving to the Wizengamot's satisfaction he wasn't in control of himself. Interestingly, his father, second cousin not removed to our esteemed Seventh Clerk, was in Slytherin House from '38 to '45 and by repute close friends with one Tom Marvolo Riddle."

"Oh, you figured it out?" It probably wasn't terribly hard, I've not exactly been discreet about it. His signature that I've been cheerfully forging is, by the standards of such things, almost legible, although he could have been using a pseudonym. Should have been, really, he certainly had a fake identity for holding most of his muggle assets.

"It was your mention of Moaning Myrtle that started us off, see? Not hard to find the odd man out in Slytherin House during that time. One of my colleagues is a crossword buff, spotted the anagram right off. We've had dossiers on that crowd for years, of course."

That makes a lot of sense. A business on the boundary between the magical and non-magical worlds would definitely have to be alive to political risk from both sides, of course.

"So," I ask, "how did Servilia Avery get involved and what did she do?"

"It starts in mid-November of '81. Dumbledore addresses the wizengamot to the effect that Harry is safe with family away from wizarding Britain, we think he was contriving to imply that he'd been placed with an overseas branch of the Potter family, not that anyone knows if such a thing exists, without actually stating as such, because indirect lies and lies by omission are perfectly acceptable in that forum where the lie direct will get you chucked out. They have fairly woolly guardianship laws on the magical side, so it's not like anyone had much ground to object as such."

"So he assumed responsibility for Harry, how did they get administration of the Potter estate away from him?"

"They bloody didn't. He handed the matter over to the Ministry to sort out. From there it's a short step to the Seventh Clerk as her office is where all such estates end up."

"At best shocking naivety," I remark.

"Bloody ignorance is what it is," Rhys says, actually bristling as he thinks about it. "It's not like the magical world is well-served for lawyers, mind, but he could have found someone among his circle of friends who might have taken the job on."

I make a note to look into wizarding lawyers at some point. They're a tiny community, so I suspect most of it's enthusiastic amateurs and gentleman jurists of one sort or another. The kind of people even a not-much-more-than-mediocre solicitor like me could eat for breakfast, bluntly. "I'm going to hazard a guess that once our esteemed Seventh Clerk got her hooks into the estate, if there was a will it went up in smoke right after it was found?"

"Since a will would have prevented everything that followed, I'm almost certain that that did in fact happen. I don't know if you're familiar with the way the old magical families operate, Mal, but they keep to the old Roman ideal of not living a day intestate. Unfair on your descendants, see? Anyway, having handed control of the Potter estate to a close relative of one of the followers of the villain they just defeated, Dumbledore uses his portfolio of public offices, his influence within the magical community and his status as an elder statesman of magical British politics to exercise the absolute square root of bugger-all oversight in the matter."

"Let me guess," I say, "productive assets and real property sold off at an undervalue to cronies, sweetheart deals on ongoing contracts that cut the payments down to nearly nothing, and investments cashed out without regard to market conditions?" Those are the obvious, easy abuses. I doubt the wizarding world is up to real chicanery, with which Harry could readily have been left an abject pauper. Besides, they couldn't know in advance that Dumbledore would give them a free hand, so they'd have had to preserve at least some modesty to cover their embezzlements.

"Down to and including the personal effects, I'm sorry to say." Rhys pauses to let me digest the enormity of that one. Ensuring an orphan has something to remember his parents by barely even counts as basic human decency and they didn't even give him that. I wonder, idly, how much it costs in the wizarding world to have someone flogged within an inch of their lives and hanged the rest of the way. Or if putting their head on a pike over the entrance to Diagon Alley would breach the bounds of good taste. Rhys goes on, "The house at Godric's hollow was given to the Ministry on a thousand-year lease at a peppercorn rent for use as a national monument."

"Repair costs remain charged to the lessor?" It's the first thing that comes to mind under the heading of 'how to take the piss beyond all reason in managing an estate'.

"Not quite that bad, but certainly no compensation for the loss of a family home. The Potters had several houses, none grand enough to call a family seat but still a worthwhile portfolio of assets, and the whole lot went at back-of-a-lorry prices. Mostly, as you surmised, to a cast of characters from Nature's Nobility. And not the nice half of the book, either, mind."

"So having lost their chief to the Potters, they took their revenge by asset-stripping their orphaned son?" I have Views on this sort of thing, as does Huw, and between the two of us there's a distinct bite of ozone in the air of this conference room. And frost forming on the inside of the windows. I'm pretty sure if we had any of the perpetrators in custody we'd have discarded all norms of civilised behaviour and started egging each other on. Crucifixions would be just the fucking start.

"While that was probably a motive, I'm sorry to say it's standard practise with intestate magical estates as far as we can tell, and when it comes to this sort of thing wizarding law is an utter joke. Which Dumbledore did not a thing to inform himself of, never mind stop, even when it was a case he'd taken a direct interest in. He's spent his entire life as a schoolteacher, he hasn't a clue how the real world works. And that's the charitable interpretation of what he's done, look you."

"I'm open to uncharitable interpretations at this time, as it happens." I'm pretty sure this is a straight-up case of the clueless schoolteacher not thinking the money was important. Hogwarts runs on endowments and Ministry subsidies, so it's not like he actually needed to know anything that brought about the headline figure of his budget. More than likely the actual purse-strings are held by the Board of Governors anyway. Nevertheless, I should hear the alternative views.

"Good heavens, where would I even start? The child has an entire bloody mythology around him already, there are childrens' books about him on sale in Diagon Alley and everything, and I can't believe that Dumbledore didn't spot that immediately after that night. He might be ignorant about money, but the man has been in politics for decades now, and even in a tiny little pond like wizarding Britain he should have picked up the basics. Knowing that, his first act is to place the child, like milk on the doorstep no less, with muggles who know nothing about the magical world. His second act is to hand the boy's patrimony over to his enemies. And ever since then he's left the situation entirely alone, and you say he's left instructions that Harry isn't to be told about any of it? I can't think of what his end-game is, if he has a plan at all, but it can't be good for little Harry. I wouldn't like to think of either of mine being dumped in a situation like that."

"Has he made any public statement that he thinks Mr. Riddle might not be all the way dead?" It's a fairly vital point: understanding what the fuck Dumbledore was thinking that night on Privet Drive hinges on it. Ten Dark and Difficult Years is a bloody big thing to explain away when you're talking about the welfare of a toddler, after all.

"He's made a few speeches on the floor of the Wizengamot, and in a few other venues, about Riddle's taint not being truly gone from our society, which I suppose counts, but never actually said outright whether the man's still with us or gone altogether. You think Dumbledore might actually have a plan?"

Again I make the rocking-hand gesture. "Maybe. I'm sure he has something he thinks is a plan. You have to wonder what the hell it might be that requires poor Harry's welfare to be disregarded like this, though. Certainly, the fact that I've been able to do the things I have tell me he doesn't have anything I would regard as a reasonable plan to deal with a threat like Riddle and the Death Eaters. There are enemy assets lying around unseized and he's not paying attention to what I think we both suspect is an important political asset."

"Out of curiosity, what would you regard as a reasonable plan?"

"Well, by analogy with the Nazis, which they resemble in more than a few ways, I think it was Hitler himself who reckoned that the only way they could have been stopped before they got going was with utmost brutality. Or some similar wording. I don't mean necessarily physical brutality, but expropriations and proscriptions should have been handed out like snuff at a bloody wake just to start with. There should have been at least some capital penalties handed out, and susceptibility to mind control, if it was allowed as a defence at all without any of the half-dozen or so magical methods of getting at the truth, should have meant immediate disbarment from any public office and the appointment of something like a Trustee in Lunacy because they're clearly too weak-willed to be allowed to manage assets."

Rhys's grin gets broader and broader as I speak. "If you're thinking of making a run for Minister, you've got my vote, look you."

"Hah. I shall treat that suggestion with the contempt it deserves. Wizarding Britain is an utter circus, and I for one don't want the ballache of being in charge of the fucking monkeys. No, for reasons I don't fully understand I ended up on the scene when Harry needed me - Dudley almost as much, if I was to put my hand on my heart - and I volunteered for the responsibility. Once it's discharged, I'm out. You know Hartlib wants me to join his crowd, right?" Rhys hasn't mentioned knowing about the involvement of Perenelle Flamel and all the other alchemists, so I don't bring it to his attention. I have no idea what the etiquette is about gossip among them, but least said soonest mended.

"He mentioned as much. Told me I should shape my investment advice accordingly, you were likely to be around a very long time even if your project doesn't pay off."

"Subject to the short-term exigencies of a brewing civil war that I've volunteered for, we can discuss that. For the moment, though, what do you need from me to get Harry's money working for him?"

"Just a signature or two, nothing more. Gringotts will take a few days to process the paperwork and then we're in business. I could have sent the documents to you in the post, but I felt you'd want to know about all of the dirty pool the buggers have been playing in a face-to-face meeting. You might have had an idea or two about it that I could get started on right away, if it was something we could help with."

"How much did Harry lose, by the by? Since I've just trousered a largish pile of seized enemy assets, I can probably cover some of the gap for him without being particularly wounded in the pockets."

"Tricky question, since the wizarding property market isn't quite as liquid as the real-world one and that's where the bulk of the robbery happened. He's got just over a quarter million Sterling equivalent in Gringotts right now, and he should have nearly three times that if the estate had been liquidated at reasonably fair values and the productive assets kept. I'm guessing you're not after a precise figure?"

"No, no need. If we can do the paperwork for transferring a half million sterling over today, let's get that done. It's wizarding-side money so Inland Revenue don't need to know, do I understand that correctly?" I have a vague idea of devoting some effort to robbing even more Death Eaters to get the money back, but that's an idea, not even a plan yet, for the future.

"Indeed not. We generally offshore our Special Circumstances customers to limit their exposure to that sort of investigation anyway."

"Will we be closing the Gringotts vault altogether?" I ask. There may after all be a use for it: managing funds across the muggle and magical divide is well off my personal map.

"We are. Gringotts don't like there to be links that the Ministry might be able to see. The goblins have got away with circumventing the control the Ministry thinks they have for nearly three hundred years at this point, and they didn't manage that by being careless. Simply put, you can have a vault with Gringotts or an account with us, not both."

"One day I'd love to investigate the history of that. One suspects the books on the shelves in Diagon Alley are about as valid history as the Matter of Britain. However!" Getting distracted by amusing questions of Lies Wizards Tell Themselves is not on today's agenda, "I assume that they write and ask for the key back if the vault is closed, yes?"

"Yes. And since neither of us know for certain who actually has the key, I suppose that we can get away with not telling them that Dumbledore has it. However, it could well be that they already know. They have no record of Dumbledore making any withdrawals, which we were quite relieved to find, but it could well be that he told them he had the key by way of courtesy. I think you should assume that at some point quite soon Dumbledore is going to know that you've involved yourself."

"Which I'm going to want to plan for. Could you let me know the exact date that the closure happens? Your introduction to Hartlib paid off handsomely, so I'm going to be making an attempt at the new body thing quite soon. The solstice is the next auspicious date, and I think it's going to take a week or so for the process to finish. At which point I'm going to be cutting about in a body with a physical age of about five, using aging potions when I need to look like the adult I actually am." Rhys nods at that; it's one of the most basic disguise potions going and an absolute godsend for this purpose: they're a sort of polyjuice of yourself that gives you a reasonable guess as to what you'll look like in the future, distance set at brewing time and duration titrated by dosage. I'm going to have to get busy establishing real-world identities - there are huge holes in the system as at this date - for both old and young versions of myself. I go on, "It's a vulnerable time for me, and handling an irate old wizard who thought he was in control of a situation and suddenly finds he isn't, well, it has the potential to be all manner o' difficult."

"An irate wizard whose motives we have reason to be suspicious of, into the bargain. I don't envy you. Still, by that time the matter will be fully beyond him doing anything about it without threatening the Statute of Secrecy. We have defences that we're confident of against anything short of that, he's not the first stroppy wizard we'll have had through our doors, see?"

I nod. There's not a lot I can say: I'm rather bricking it at the prospect of facing Dumbledore, and the only comforting thought is that he's known to be very slow to violence. My best hope is that he'll let me get a word in edgewise. With that much, I can persuade him to a sentence or two, and if I can thereby at least draw him in to a discussion I should be able to convince him that removing me from the picture - which I can and will make extraordinarily difficult for him - is going to bugger things up altogether. I've time to think and prepare, at any rate, and for now I've got papers to sign and a copy of Rhys's file to peruse.

Also, note to self: find out who the investigators are who got all the gen on Harry's estate, and see if they're open to side jobs. I can afford it, and even if I can't steal from the buggers, knowing who's got what and from whom is the kind of information you can use to start them squabbling with each other. An amusing diversion if nothing else.

-oOo-

"Hello, Missus Flamel," Harry says, sort of half-emerging from behind me, a bit shy around strangers still. Mme. Flamel actually volunteered to come and help with the Big Day, which I'm glad of. We're going to need a small blood sample from Harry, which he has been warned about and has promised to be brave for, and I don't even know how to do regular phlebotomy, never mind the paediatric variety. Perenelle has, she tells me, been a qualified medical practitioner of one sort or another long enough that she taught medicine at the temple school at Sais, and actually quotes me her BMA number to establish that she has kept current.

(The torrent of pre-modern Greek profanity over the telephone when I asked her how difficult it was to learn phlebotomy was a bit over the odds, if you ask me. Does nothing to pin down her origins either, since I can't tell the difference by ear between medieval, Koine and Classical Greek, and they were incredibly widespread and long-lived languages from the rise of Alexander the Great to the fall of Byzantium. I barely have more than a few pleasantries in Modern Greek, when all's said and done.)

She has come today looking entirely stylish in floral print that harks back to the nineteen-forties and a headscarf that frames her face in such a way that it shifts my guess at where she's from to the eastern end of the med. Egypt or the Levant, for a certainty, she's got a face that would blend in anywhere from the Nile to the Dardanelles. She's been in England long enough, of course, that she's got the lingo down to and including a cut-glass Received Pronunciation accent that would probably make the Queen her own self feel a bit common.

She does that knees-together squat thing that skirted women do to get down on Harry's level. "Has Mal told you why I'm here, Harry?"

"He says you know lots about magic and alchemy, Missus Flamel, and you're a doctor too so you're going to help with the bits Mal doesn't know how to do very well."

"That's right. Has Mal told you we're going to need a tiny little bit of your blood?"

Harry nods.

"Well, I know how to get it out without it hurting at all. Just a tiny little bit of magic and a little needle, you'll feel a little push on your skin and then it's all over. Won't that make it easier to be brave?"

"Yes," Harry says, nodding. "I've been putting words in a bottle as well, and Mal already did the swab thingy inside my mouth."

"Oh, jolly good," Perenelle says, "and I see you've brought someone to help, there? Care to tell me who that is?"

"It's Mister Brontosaurus," Harry says, holding his stuffed dinosaur up for inspection. "He's only a toy, but Mal says he's good hugging practise an' it never hurts to have a dinosaur on your side even if he's a vegetarian, 'cos he's dead big and stompy."

"I just bet he is." She straightens up. "Now, I'm going to get changed into my special clothes for doing magic, and then we can see how far Mal has got with getting ready."

"Mal says he's going to be my brother when we're finished," Harry says, with a curious tone in his voice. "Will it really work like that?"

"How've you explained it to him?" She's got a slightly sharp tone in her voice. I suspect she's got similar opinions to mine when it comes to kids, and if my handling of Harry ever falls below her personal standards she's unlikely to be gentle with me.

"Well, we've been over how genes work to make bodies, both the normal way and the way we're doing it today, and that the body we're making would be exactly the same as a twin brother if he'd had one. He knows that it'll still be me inside, so not really a brother, and I've been doing for him the way a daddy would and I'm going to keep doing that. We won't tell anyone about the brother thing, because whenever we're out of the house I'll be using magic to look like a grown-up and when I'm doing that he can call me Uncle Mal." Harry's nodding along. He's grabbed the 'brother' part and clung to it, unfortunately. The actual relationship we're going to have is 'foster-dad who looks like a twin brother a lot of the time' which is probably a bit much for him at his age and with his abuse-arrested development.

"So, Harry," Flamel says, "someone who'll look like a brother and can act like one if he needs to, but not really a brother because he's a grown up on the inside? Do you understand that?"

"Yes," Harry says confidently, "I understand."

"Why don't you go and sit down for a moment while I have a talk with Mal?" Harry nods and goes to sit on the sofa where he was reading before Mme. Flamel arrived.

"Are you sure about this?" she asks me, in a low voice, "the ideas in that little boy's head are going to have an effect on the magic, and I'm not sure he's got an accurate grasp of what we're doing. A good grasp, for a child his age, but not an accurate one."

"I'm counting on it," I tell her, "that little man's faith in me has got us out of at least one dangerous situation already. He understands that I'm going to be family to him, and the ambiguity of him not being quite sure how is going to work out nicely since I'm filling more than one role in relation to him."

"Show me the arithmancy," she orders.

"I've got three highly-likely possibilities, four more less-likely-but-still-probable outcomes for a sevenfold path, and a double-ogdoad of possible improbabilities," I'm calling the lever-arch full of calculation worksheets to my hand as I speak, "giving me a circle of twenty-three ends-in-view. This page is the executive summary: they're all positive results. I've stacked the deck that hard. And, of course, we've got a prime number of augurable outcomes and a strong three-and-seven right in the heart of it all."

She snorts, taking the file and flipping through it. I'm confident in my working: I have been thorough. You get Isaac Fucking Newton marking your homework, you really can do no other. At length she snorts again. "You've rather done it up brown, haven't you?"

"Ooooh yes," I say, "if a thing's worth doing it's worth tearing the arse out of it, I always say. Of course, Riddle's shade acting like such an utter idiot that first night gave me a flying start: Harry couldn't help but see me as his own personal superhero after that. His faith in me is quite humbling, if I was to put my hand on my heart over it. I'll be writing again to Nicolas, of course, but in the meantime convey my thanks again for his monographs on faith, hope and joy in ceremonial magic. Not just strong stuff, but magic we've been having fun with."

"Oh, Nico will be insufferable over it, I'm sure. He's always been of the view that you get the best results when you're happy in your work, and he calls me a horrible morbid killjoy when I maintain that practicality means you can't rely on it. Still, that cheery approach to life he has is about half of why I married him." She's smiling fondly. I'm rather looking forward to meeting Nicolas, it has to be said. If he can still make a dreadnought like Mme. Flamel come over all soppy after six centuries, he must be a rare sort indeed.

"So, are you happy to proceed?" I ask, "It's not like there aren't other auspicious days in the near future and the difference in the arithmancy isn't that great, especially if you think we should go back to the drawing board." I'm sincere about this: when someone with at least a millennium of experience tells you to abort mission, you listen.

"Actually, no," she says, "you've done well and I'm quietly confident. Nicolas and Isaac marked your homework on that arithmancy, after all, and Nico in particular assures me you've done well with it. I was just a little surprised by Harry's remark but I see you've accounted for his child's understanding. Which, well done, by the way. 'Never work with children or animals' is a proverb in magic as well as on the stage, after all, and it's for good reason, but you seem to be up to it."

"In Harry's case, certainly," I allow.

"Right, where can I change?"

"We've the house to ourselves, so I'd suggest picking one of the unused bedrooms in the tent in the room directly opposite the top of the stairs."

Once Mme. Flamel is changed - a plain dress and long shawl, both in undyed but high-quality linen, which was apparently working clothes for a physician-priestess in her day, I don't know enough about historical costumes to guess when and where that was - we process out to the garage. There are muggleworthiness rune-parchments - they're a standard enchantment, you can buy them ready-made in Diagon Alley and several books explain how to make them - pinned to stakes along the property boundaries so nobody in the adjoining houses will notice that we're all dressed rather oddly as we cross the back garden. The clothing is as much a part of the ceremonial as anything else, and has to be white and 'proper to our function'. It was Hartlib who clued me in that I should be guided by my own understanding of that last, and since we're doing something from the most scientific-medical end of magical practice, I settled on white scrubs and labcoat.

Harry's got the same in his own size - I had to prevail on Petunia to get out her sewing machine to cut the smallest size they sold down - and I suspect we've got his next Halloween costume sorted out with the addition of just a few props and a wig. He's full of the importance of the occasion, and because his childlikeness (is that even a word? It is now!) is a vital part of what we're doing I've made sure he brought Mister Brontosaurus - the first toy of his own he ever had - and bought him a Fisher Price Doctor playset to carry with him. He has his gene sample - a simple cheek swab in a sterile tube - in one lab coat pocket and the bottle he's been speaking into all morning in the other.

Mme Flamel is absolutely made up with the sight of him and stops to give him a hug. "You, young man, absolutely look the part. Well done, and I'm sure you're going to be a brilliant wizard when you're all grown up." She follows it up with a kiss on the forehead that leaves a little smear of lipstick. I honestly can't tell if she's gone all grandmotherly to reinforce Harry's part in this or if it's genuine. Or both. Both is good.

Either way, Harry grins at the praise and eats up the affection, and then remembers to go back to being Serious and Proper. I haven't told him to do this, he has just decided that this is a Big Day that should be approached with all solemnity.

I've been up since half past three this morning getting everything set up. Runic and alchemical texts chalked on every wall, a carefully-traced geometry on the floor, made up of plotted curves and figures inside a bounding circle, and in the centre the diamond sarcophagus that is my reaction vessel. It's raised on diamond blocks over an old-fashioned oil lamp whose symbolic fire and heat are all that the magical reaction is going to need to get started. I've dealt with the actual heat-of-reaction needed for the alchemical part by the simple expedient of buying a shitload of fan heaters and putting them on thermostatic controls. It's going to be thirty-seven celsius in here for the whole seven nights the alchemy needs to run for. Strictly speaking, between 37.3 and 37.6 at the thermocouple suspended over the sarcophagus lid. The electricity bill after the next meter reading is going to be hilarious.

The practical upshot is that it is stinking hot in here, and Vernon is not built for the heat, even after nearly a year of healthy eating and sensible exercise has slimmed him down to merely burly. Harry has been thoroughly hydrated before we came out, so he should be fine for the forty-one minutes this is going to take. Mme. Flamel takes the heat in stride, she's dressed for it after all, and unless I miss my guess she grew up somewhere that heat like this was normal conditions.

There are lab stools for Mme Flamel and Harry - she helps him on to his - because the first half hour is just me. I have a hundred kilos of rendered, slurried pig in five-gallon brewers' carboys and the first step is levitating those to the sarcophagus while holding the lid up. It's a tricky bit of levitation, but I've been practising. Having a wand in my hand massively raises the weight limits, and gives me enough extra dexterity that I can do this while reciting the spell I wrote. It's a simple chant to consecrate the materials to the task at hand and dedicate the vessel to its purpose. Levitating everything doesn't just keep me out of the bounding circle, it ensures that while I'm chanting the spell my magic is touching everything it needs to affect. The chant itself is in very simple latin, which I picked for the language of the spell because it's much easier to stay on-metre without sacrificing grammatical accuracy and rhyme isn't a thing in latin verse.

Because it has to be sung, I go with plainchant to the tune of Nothing Else Matters. I picked it because I know it well, what with being kind of a fan until they decided to just be completely rubbish. I also knew before I started how well it works for plainchant - there's an actual Gregorian chant cover of the Metallica original - and the original lyrics have overtones of fierce commitment that I want in the magic I'm doing. It's also dead easy to transpose into a major key to remove any possible taint of gloom from proceedings, even on the cheap-as-chips Casiotone keyboard I bought to rehearse with.

When I upend the carboys into the sarcophagus on the final beat there's a slight moment of low comedy as Harry calls out "Yuck!" at the sight of the pinkish-grey slime that runs out. There are also slurping, glooping, and farty noises that set him off giggling for the whole five minutes it takes for the vessels to empty. Which is brilliant. Removal of counteracting influences is a major component of ritual magic and you don't get much better at fucking off the dark forces than a child's carefree laughter. I'm grinning along with him, and Mme. Flamel has a pursed-lips smile on her face. She's got a fairly earthy sense of humour about her, so I suspect that only matronly dignity is keeping her from joining in with Harry.

I notice, while I'm spending the next twenty minutes lighting votive candles, lamps and censers in a carefully-timed sequence and chanting the spells to go with, that Harry has his bottle open again and is speaking in to it. I've told him to tell the bottle everything he likes and hopes about me and my new body, and everything he can think of to say if he was telling a new friend about me. I'm confident it'll all be good stuff, of course. I can see that he has an attentive audience, but I've been careful not to listen in. I trust Harry, and it's part of the magic that I have to show that trust. He's been filling that bottle since Petunia and Dudley went out for the day - the Zoo again, Dudley is a boy of firm and fixed tastes - with the most amazingly solemn and attentive expression on his face. Although I've spotted him giggling as he talks to the bottle a couple of times, so there's a chance that part is going to come in stronger than I planned for. There isn't a balancing factor - this is a working for a male body, so everything's in odd numbers - and I knew it was a bit of a wild card. Can't be helped, and 'better than planned for' is rarely unwelcome.

Once the lights are lit - they'll burn down naturally over the next few hours, leaving the sarcophagus in the warm and dark - we have a few minutes in which there is no critical timing at all and we're just waiting to start the final stages.

"Enjoying it so far, Harry?"

"I liked the song," he says, "and the gloopy stuff was funny when it went all farty." More giggles. "What's it made of?"

"It's all that pork I had in the freezer, all minced up small with pure fresh water. It's like really runny sausage, I suppose." There are alchemical and potions reagents in there too, and a couple of bags of bonemeal. Getting it all to the right consistency involved a lot of casting of a couple of simple spells, a catering-grade blender and a sweaty hour of stirring a 55-gallon drum with a rowan-wood paddle.

That's another round of giggles, around which he gasps out, "Mal's - goin' - to - be - made - of - SAUSAGE!"

"I know. And, you know what? I wouldn't have it any other way. Sausages are brilliant. Dead tasty."

Harry's still giggling a bit. "Sorry, I'll try an' be seeerious."

"Long as you stay happy, our kid, you can be as serious or silly as you want. Now, are you ready to be brave for us?"

He gives us a loud, clear, "YEP!" and thrusts out his arm to Mme. Flamel.

She produces a swab with a sharp medicinal smell and rubs it on the crook of his elbow.

"I'll hold you steady," I tell Harry, as I hug him close from behind and reach around to take hold of his wrist. "You decide if you want to watch or not."

"I'll be brave," Harry says, in a firm voice, fixing his gaze on where the medicated swab was.

"What a good little boy you are," Mme. Flamel tells him, "I wish all my patients were as brave as you. Now, it shouldn't hurt, but you'll feel me pressing. If you could just take a tight grip around his wrist, Mal, and squeeze a few times for me - there." In a move that speaks of long practice she has the needle in his arm, a 7cc sample taken, and the needle out and cotton wool pressed on the puncture in what can't be much more than a couple of seconds.

"I do like working with this modern equipment," she says, "it used to be so much harder. Now, the most important part of the procedure. A lollipop for a brave little boy, yes?"

I've no idea whether it's sleight of hand or a cheeky bit of magic - I don't hear anything, but this room is, magically speaking, loud as balls - but she flourishes her hand and Harry gets his choice of raspberry, lime, orange and strawberry lollies. He picks strawberry, and gets the other three tucked in his lab-coat top pocket. "For later."

Harry has been completely cool about the whole thing, and I'm suitably impressed. I've no idea whether I'm just lucky, or what, but Harry is now the fourth kid I've accompanied for medical procedures that handled it with complete aplomb. If, heaven forbid, I ever have to take him in to get stitches - and two out of my three managed to get themselves dinged through youthful high spirits so the odds aren't looking good between him and Dudley - I'm now reasonably certain he'll keep his end up.

We're now on the final leg, and I return to the officiant's position on the far side of the circle. Something tells me I should boost Harry's part in proceedings - it's not in the script, but I'm following the magic at least as much as the script at this point which I take as a good sign - so I bring Harry along to hand me the final three ingredients when their time comes.

"Genes, freely given! Give form to the new body!" I call out, and Harry hands me the cheek swab for me to levitate into the sarcophagus.

"Blood, bravely given! Give life to the new body!" Harry's right on his cue with the little phial, which I upend into the reagents. They start to swirl and faintly steam.

"Words, lovingly breathed! Give humanity to the new body!" Harry's bottle goes in last, and as I upend it and summon the cap back to my hand, the magic Harry has poured into it with his breath and voice actually visibly sparkles. A very good sign.

I put the lid on, and concentrate hard to tie it down tightly with sturdy linen ribbons on which runic spells are written. This is tricky work when you can't physically step closer than a metre and a half and have to do everything by telekinesis. Between the physical and magical effort and forty minutes in this heat, I feel like a bucket of wilted lettuce. Stepping out into the back garden, even on a bright hot upper-twenties summer day like the one we've got, feels beautifully refreshing.

Back inside the house Harry flops down into a chair at the kitchen table, and Mme. Flamel joins him. He offers her a lollipop, and she accepts the lime one with all due solemnity.

"Now it's just waiting seven nights. Sunrise next Saturday, it'll be done," I say. "Tea? Harry, milk?"

I get the drinks - I've laid in a supply of peppermint tea, because I know Mme Flamel likes it, and sort myself out with a brew of the regular stuff strong enough to float a brick in. We're making desultory conversation, Harry and I are a bit blown from the effort we've put in and our guest is being polite about it until we get our mental wind back (especially me, I think Harry's just a bit mindblown from the biggest, most impressive magic he's seen so far and will recover faster) when we hear the front door opening.

"Funny," I say, "Petunia's not due back for ages. The Zoo has only just closed and she's promised Dudley Pizzaland on the way home."

I rise and go into the hall. Framed in the front door is a tall figure in a long, dove-grey robes with lilac accents. With long silver hair about his shoulders and a beard gathered in a luminescent cloisonné ring at belt level, and a tasseled hat. I can't pick out much more detail, the light is behind him and Vernon's eyes haven't adjusted yet. Not that that is necessary: there can't be more than a few individuals answering that description and only one that'd turn up here.

Fuck me, it's Albus Bloody Dumbledore.

"Ah, Mr. Dursley," he says, and suddenly the blue of his eyes is fierce and bright, no matter the lack of light to see them by.

-oOo-

AUTHOR NOTES

I could have said much more about the soul-crushing tedium of the life of the junior lawyer sitting last in the list in a County Court waiting room. I included this bit because I read one too many massively dramatic trials in fanfics and wanted to put something out there by way of balance. Courtroom procedure is boring. Be thankful I didn't give you the proceedings in full.

The whole "How Much Is Harry Potter Worth" question is a very much vexed one in the fandom, isn't it? The figure I've chosen, on top of everything else I've settled on with regard to wizarding money, means there are between fifty and sixty thousand coins in Vault 687, enough to be 'mounds'. As to the shenanigans with his estate? This sort of thing used to happen all the time.

Sais (modern Sa el-Hagar, in Egypt) is the site of the oldest known medical school, the Temple of Neith (identified by Greek scholars with Isis/Athena). There are inscriptions attesting it as a school of what we'd now call obstetrics and gynaecology in particular, run by 'divine mothers'. It was old in Plato's time, and continued at least until the Fatimids invaded in the 7th Century.

The ritual is stitched together out of stuff from about half a dozen different magical traditions in addition to the obvious references to the dark arts version that appears in the books. Which is why you've got ancient egyptian 'power of the breath and voice' being spoken into a late-medieval/early modern English witch-bottle with a smoothie of pythagorean and qabbalistic numerology in a hermetic/abramelite workspace augmented with an old north-country butter-churning folkway and modern technomancy. Can you tell I'm having fun with this?

Finally, Cliffhanger. I'd apologise, but I'm not a bit sorry.

Fanfic recommendation: Wind Shear by Chilord (on both FFN and AO3). It's a Harry-thrown-back-in-time story and an interesting look at wizarding society before Voldemort manages to make a complete horlicks of everything. Some of the things he came up with inspired some of my choices of how to build a working wizarding society. But I'm mainly recommending it for how much of an absolutely ripping yarn it is.