7

Chapter Seven – Hermione's Decision

Weasley Residence

Monday 14th March 2049

Six months had passed since Harry's death and Hermione's interrogation of the portrait of Albus Dumbledore had confirmed the worst fears she had harboured regarding the manipulations and lies she had suspected had been perpetrated against him so many years ago.

Hermione had spent the bulk of those six months reading, reviewing and analysing the notes that Harry had left her about his attempt to return to the past. Then re-reading, re-checking calculations, re-analysing the data and drawing conclusions of her own.

The first thing that she had concluded was that there were errors in Harry's reckoning.

Whilst the principles he had worked from were fine and all of his calculations were correct, he hadn't taken into account some of the most recent research that she and her team had generated, and it made a fundamental difference to how the ritual that Harry had performed would work.

When she re-worked the calculations according to the most recent research findings, she concluded that Harry hadn't needed to die in order to power the spell, but could in fact have used the excess burn-off of energy that might have been created by the breaking of the binding on his magic to safely destroy those bindings and to power his intentions.

'Oh Harry!' she thought to herself. 'You always were the one to go off with a plan half-ready, weren't you?'

From her analysis of what Harry had actually done, the ritual was intended to send his life force back to himself as a toddler – it seemed he had aimed for mere days after being left at the Dursleys as the target date for this – but Hermione rather thought that it wouldn't be as accurate as that, and could end up landing him some ten years either side of that date, and if that ended up being before he was born, it was likely that the ritual would have failed.

As she sat at the desk in her home office and re-calibrated the ritual according to her most recent information, an idea cropped up that wouldn't go away.

Could she perform the ritual with amendments in order to send her own magic back to give Harry a better life?

A reassessment of what would be needed seemed to indicate that she could actually travel back in time in her own body, whilst remaining alive and well here in the twenty-first century, but could she take the risk? Did she not have a responsibility to Ron and her family in the present day? And what would happen if it went wrong? Indeed, what would happen even if it went right?

Ron was his usual phlegmatic self about the risks.

"What do you want to do again? Send your magic back in time to when Harry was a baby, and interfere with Dumbledore's plan for him?" he asked.

"Basically, yes."

"Well, I can see why you'd want to do that, but how would it affect us here and now?"

"It wouldn't. It would create a separate timeline. One where Harry might grow up without being abused by the Dursleys. Where Dumbledore wasn't able to manipulate him into sacrificing himself to Voldemort. Where he wouldn't have his magic bound and die early."

"And you've got all the calculations worked out?"

"Well yes, but if I've got them wrong..."

Ron shrugged.

"I can't see that happening," he said. "Something like this you get right all the time."

"You're not worried about the risk?" Hermione asked, a little surprised.

"Love, everything we do there's a risk. Each time I go out and respond to a call as an Auror there's a risk I'll get struck down and killed. If you've done the calculations right – and I'm absolutely bloody positive you will have for something as important as this – then there's no risk at all by comparison."

"Really? So you'll support me if I go through with this?"

"Of course. We'll be sitting here the day after feeling embarrassed about having even had this conversation, since nothing will have happened here. I've got a much more important question, though."

"What's that?"

"Since you've gathered all this information about how Dumbledore manipulated the whole world into believing exactly what he wanted them top believe about Voldemort and the Potters, what are you going to do about it?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, don't you want to get some revenge on him?"

"How would I do that? He's been dead for more than fifty years."

"I thought you might publish a book about him – 'The Dumbledore Horror Story' or something like that – ruin his reputation once and for all. You know that almost everyone still thinks of him as some sort of hero..."

"You know, Ron, that's might just be one of the best ideas you've had in ages...

"But before that, I need to plan out exactly what I need to do when I go back to the 1980s...

DOHPDOHPDOHPDOHPDOHPDOHPDOHPDOHP

Mannings Heath, nr Horsham, West Sussex

Saturday 19th September 1981

A smile graced the lips of the former Hermione Granger as she woke and realised that in this world it was essentially her second birthday. Not that she looked two-years-old, mind, given that she had already lived just short of seventy years before she had made her way here.

For the umpteenth time since performing the ritual, she hoped that Ron had been right, that her calculations had been accurate and that she was still living a life in the twenty-first century.

Planning for coming back to 1981 had taken several months before she was satisfied that she had covered as many eventualities as she could. Ron had come up with innumerable potential hurdles for her to think through and she realised that there was no chance that she could possibly cater for every thinkable scenario, not least because she had no way of knowing how things would change in this new world once she got here.

She had arrived right at the start of the year in order to get her preparations in place. She essentially had nothing, so a job and a house were the first things on her agenda, and it had seemed strange how easily she had managed to convince people that she had the expertise to take on the work they provided, and the funds to obtain a mortgage. She hadn't even needed to perform any magic to get their co-operation, but then she realised that this was a time before the mass hysteria over personal data and identity theft, and the computer age was barely starting.

In fact, her basic knowledge of what was now cutting edge technology had earned her a very quick promotion to a role where she could actually afford a decent house, and she'd supplemented her income with some shrewd trips to the bookmakers (never the same one twice) based on her memory of what had originally happened in 1981, and these had paid off in larger and larger sums and she was now richer than she could possibly have imagined.

Her new identity was as a 34-year-old, no nonsense computer programmer, who had recently moved out of London to more rural surroundings and who was independently wealthy. She had trimmed back her ever-bushy hair to a more manageable length and felt strangely happy with the results.

Her colleagues were already speculating that she was probably recently divorced or widowed from a high-flying London banker or stockbroker, given the mark of a recently removed ring on her finger, her mature elegance and her general competence.

She had already declined several offers of dinner dates – she wasn't entirely sure how she felt about this, given that she still felt married to Ron even if he wasn't here with her, and she suspected it might be some time before she felt comfortable enough to accept any of the propositions being made to her – and was staring to gain a reputation as not being as easy a target as her admirers thought she might have been.

"It's not cheating on me," Ron had told her when she had raised her concerns about how things might go. "You'll still be here with me, so I can hardly complain about what might be happening seventy years ago."

It still felt a little strange to her though, and being the centre of male attention was something she wasn't really used to.

After initially renting a flat in the centre of Horsham, close to the IT company she was working for, she had quickly invested much of the proceeds of her gambling into a larger detached house in Mannings Heath, a few miles out into the country on the edge of the High Weald, and often cycled to and from work when the weather promised to be fair.

At the same time, she was re-building her knowledge of the Wizarding World in the 1980s through occasional trips to Diagon Alley and Hogsmeade and a regular subscription to the Daily Prophet.

The Wizarding locations had a very low footfall, and it became clear to Hermione that there was a heavy climate of fear, with much of the population scared of potential attacks by Death Eaters and not venturing out unless absolutely necessary. Many of the shops she was familiar with were closed and had signs stating that they would only open on weekends, whilst the others were minimally staffed and there were very few customers. Unlike her very first visit to the Wizarding world, people weren't sat around in the Leaky Cauldron having lunch or reading the newspaper when she went through, nor was there a throng of business in the Alley.

The only location that seemed to be undisturbed by the fear was Gringotts. The goblins were highly suspicious of Hermione when she first went in, but given that she had a wealth of currency to convert from pounds sterling to Galleons they simply assumed she was a muggle-born passing through that they had rarely seen before, or had come from abroad. She made no attempt to open a vault or to access one, so their interest soon waned.

'I'm not going to meet many people here,' she thought to herself as she browsed in Flourish and Blotts that morning, 'if witches and wizards are too scared to come out, but at least I won't blow my cover so soon!'

From what she had been able to find out, Voldemort was at the peak of his powers and his Death Eaters were attacking at will once they found a suitable target – muggleborns and members of Dumbledore's Order of the Phoenix appeared to be the primary casualties.

This tallied with what she knew of the time period – that it was only the attack on the Potters that had ended a reign of terror – and whilst she felt a little guilty at not intervening somehow, she was aware enough of her own lack of training to be confident of facing down Voldemort and she realised that she knew too little about those attacks and could have done nothing to avert them in any case.

Instead she continued planning for the first of her moves to help Harry, which was set to begin as soon as the Potters had been attacked, and continued building up her fortune.

DOHPDOHPDOHPDOHPDOHPDOHPDOHPDOHP

Prophecy Hall, Department of Mysteries

Sunday 1st November 1981

"Explain again what you want," the Unspeakable said as they walked down the length of the rows of Prophecies.

"I want to test whether a specific prophecy has been fulfilled."

"Do you know what that prophecy says?"

"Yes."

"Do I want to know?"

"Probably. If it has been fulfilled then it's eventually going to be important that people know it no longer applies. If it hasn't then I'm going to want to talk to you and some of your colleagues about the ways in which it can be interpreted and how we might convince someone away from a specific interpretation that they have already lit upon."

"Sounds ominous."

"Yes. I'll tell you once we're done here, if necessary. Obviously, if you wanted to check on what I tell you it says then you'll be able to ask the person who received it, but I'm hoping that won't be necessary."

"Hmmph. Okay."

They turned into row ninety-seven and went down to the far end.

"That one," the woman said pointing at one particular dusty-looking sphere with spidery writing on the label.

"SPT to APWBD," the Unspeakable read. "This was given to Dumbledore?" he asked.

"Yes."

"And... he knows the content?"

"Yes."

"Who else knows?"

"Apart from myself? Sybil Trelawney gave the Prophecy but has no recollection of it. Severus Snape heard the first part of it and passed it on to Voldemort."

"Dark Lord and (?) Harry Potter," the Unspeakable read the remainder of the tag. "It's about the Dark Lord and a baby?" he asked incredulously.

"Maybe. I'm not sure who added Harry's name to the tag, but it might refer to him."

"How do you want to do this?"

"I brought a hammer," the woman said, and pulled it out of the bag she had been carrying over her shoulder.

"Unorthodox, I suppose, but I guess it doesn't matter. You realise that you can't remove it, don't you? Only those it might be about can take it from the shelf."

"That depends on what you mean by 'remove it'. I've seen someone push the shelves over and destroy hundreds of Prophecies in one fell swoop, so you might want to re-think some of your security measures here if that's the only thing you've got."

"Sweet Merlin! No! Hundreds of Prophecies?"

"Exactly," the woman said.

"Let's not do that," the Unspeakable said in fearful tones. "If I allowed you in here and you did that I'd be... I don't know, but it wouldn't be good, I can tell you! I imagine that getting fired would be the least of my worries!"

"Quite. Shall I?"

"Go ahead. But be careful, please!"

She lifted the hammer and gave the glass sphere a heavy tap. The glass shattered and a pearly white figure with hugely magnified eyes rose into the air and began speaking in harsh, hoarse tones.

"The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches... born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies... and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not... and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives... the one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies..."

The figure stopped speaking and dissolved into nothingness, leaving just the shards of the sphere on the shelf where the Prophecy has lain.

"Whoa! Okay," the Unspeakable said, surprised. "That's way deeper than I was expecting. This means... the Dark Lord is dead?"

"Or someone else 'with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord' is, I suppose."

They exchanged looks for a moment.

"What do you want me to do?"

"For now, nothing," the woman said. "But at some point I might need you to corroborate that we broke the glass sphere, and therefore the Prophecy has been fulfilled."

"Why?"

"Because I fear that someone may try and use the Prophecy to try and justify some bad decisions, and it would be useful to have an ally in preventing child abuse, if nothing else."

"Child abuse? Of Harry Potter?"

"Yes."

"You know much more than you are saying."

"Yes."

"Do I want to know what you aren't telling me?"

"Not at this time. If things go as I fear then I'll explain further. I rather hope that I can avert the biggest problems."

The Unspeakable gave her a long, speculative look.

"I think, when I retire, I'm going to want a full explanation."

"Can you wait that long?"

"Yes."

"Good," the woman said with a smile. "Thank you, Jeremy."

"How did you know- No, never mind," the Unspeakable decided. "I don't want to know."

As the woman left the Department of Mysteries she pulled her wand out and scanned the area for threats. Then cast.

"Point Me Sirius Black," she said, and watched as her wand rotated to point off to her left, before Apparating away.

DOHPDOHPDOHPDOHPDOHPDOHPDOHPDOHP

Ministry of Magic

Monday 2nd November 1981

She'd been too late.

By the time she managed to locate Sirius, he had already found Peter Pettigrew and their confrontation on busy Princess Street in Manchester had seen the deaths of twelve Muggles that she had been unable to prevent.

She had hoped to reach him before he caught up with Pettigrew, but it had just taken too long to track him down, not knowing where the confrontation would take place.

Now she was being passed from pillar to post in the Ministry as she tried to find someone who would listen to her. With no reputation or background, no senior staff were even willing to see her, and amongst the confusion and celebrations beginning to take place in the wake of the reports of Voldemort's defeat, it was difficult to find someone who would even take her seriously. Certainly nobody directly involved in the high-profile case of Sirius Black, murderer and betrayer, was available for her to provide information to or ask questions of.

Eventually a low-level Auror by the name of Max Stillwell agreed to talk to her and take a deposition.

"Right, so what's all this nonsense about?" he asked. "We're busy trying to resolve a murder case and trying to find out what happened to You-know-Who, so we haven't got time to mess about with people coming in to give us a hard time."

"It's about Sirius Black," Hermione began. "He's not guilty-"

"I don't know what you think you might know, but unless you were an actual eyewitness to the confrontation between him and Peter Pettigrew, exactly what do you think you can tell us that would provide any evidence towards that?"

"He wasn't the Potters' Secret Keeper."

"Firstly, how would you know this? And secondly, what does that have to do with the murder of Peter Pettigrew? Or the deaths of twelve muggles?"

"I can't answer the first question, but I know it to be true. Pettigrew was actually the Secret Keeper."

"What's your evidence for this?"

Hermione was at a loss. She could hardly tell the Auror that she had come back in time and that she knew what had happened.

"You don't have any? Fine."

"It was Pettigrew that blew up the street, not Black," she tried to tell him.

"Again, unless you were there and have eyewitness evidence, how do you know this?" her silence told him all he needed to know. "Indeed."

"Have you checked his wand to see what spells he cast?"

"Priori Incantantem?"

"Yes. Surely that would show whether or not he was culpable?"

Stillwell paused for a moment.

"I'll take that into consideration," he said, "but my superiors already seem to have their minds made up and I am not sure I will be able to influence them."

He put down the quill he'd been using to take notes and looked her in the eye.

"Now, unless you actually have any evidence yourself, please stop wasting valuable Auror time. I will find out who cast what spells and who did what, and I will make sure that it is in the record of the case. That's all I can do. Please leave," he said, indicating the door to the office.

Hermione stood and walked over to the door, looking back at the Auror for a moment before she left.

"If nothing else, Auror Stillwell, can you make sure that Black gets a trial?"

"That's standard practice, madam, not that he deserves it with what he's said to have done."

She turned away and left.

DOHPDOHPDOHPDOHPDOHPDOHPDOHPDOHP

Crawley, West Sussex

Tuesday 3rd November 1981

The woman knocked on the door of number 16, Kingston Drive, Crawley, with a strange sense of anxiety gnawing away in the pit of her stomach.

She was intimately familiar with the house, a modern four bedroom detached in a rather prosperous area of the town, having lived here for many years of her childhood, and it felt somewhat strange to be knocking on the front door rather than letting herself into the kitchen via the back door.

The lady who opened the door took one look at her and blinked in surprise.

"Blimey!" she said. "I didn't realise that I had an elder sister!"

The resemblance between the two was uncanny. Only the developing crows feet around the eyes of the visitor and one or two grey hairs that were staring to emerge would have given a stranger anything of a clue as to who was who.

The visitor smiled. "I'm sorry to drop by unannounced," she said. "I'm here to talk to you about your daughter and some of the strange things that you may have noticed going on around her. Might I come in?"

"Oh, certainly!" the householder replied, opening the door wider and gesturing for her guest to enter. "I've been going spare with Hermione of late. Every time I turn around she seems to have managed to escape from her playpen. I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name..."

"These days," the older woman said, as her host guided her into the living room, "I'm known as Monica Wilkins."

"Well it's nice to meet you, Monica, please, call me Helen. You say 'these days' – what did you use to be known as?"

"It will probably come as something of a shock to you, but I was born Hermione Granger."

Helen blinked.

Then looked at her two-year-old daughter in the playpen in the corner of the room.

The back at her visitor.

"This isn't a joke, is it?" she said, glad she was already seated.

"No, I'm afraid not," Monica admitted. "It's going to sound really weird, but I'm actually your daughter. And I've come back in time from 2049. You might say I've come back to save the world, but it's not quite as dramatic as that. Really, I've come back to try and give one particular person an opportunity to have a decent life instead of the one they were forced into."

"Time travel is real?"

"Yes, indeed. Or rather, no, not yet, if you see what I mean!"

"Ah. Okay. You mean it was where you have come from, but not here."

"Exactly. And it's not exactly commonplace in the future, either, otherwise I'm sure the world would have been inundated with other time travellers as well. It's actually something that I've been doing research into over the last fifty years."

"Hence it you who is here?"

"Sort of," and the woman now known as Monica Wilkins began to tell her story, beginning from when her friend Harry had died until now.

"That's terrible!" Helen told her. "That someone would put a young boy through all that just because they thought that the world was going to turn out in a particular way if they did! That poor child!"

"Indeed. And that's why I've come back."

"What are you planning to do about it?" Helen asked.

"I'm hoping to persuade certain people that Harry isn't anything special, but also, I'm hoping to remove Harry from his current environment and tone down the influence of those who would use him as their tool."

"You mean he's with those abusive relatives right now?"

"Yes. They will have found him on their doorstep with a letter yesterday morning. I'm intending to retrieve him from there in the next day or so, before they can inflict themselves on him, but I need to know what plan to follow, which is why I'm here."

"What do you mean?"

"Well," Monica explained, "I'm wondering whether you might be willing to adopt another child."

"You mean legally adopt Harry?"

"Yes."

"Why us?"

"Several reasons, really. First, I know you would treat him well and bring him up properly, to both be inquisitive and creative but also to have respect for those who have earned it. Secondly, I know that you always wanted more children, but were unable to have them after you had me, and had considered adopting in the past... my past, that is.

"Thirdly, I was quite lonely as an only child, despite your efforts. I tended to be quite self-absorbed and introverted, and I think having a brother might have helped with that. And finally, it gives me a good justification for also being able to teach Hermione to use her own magic. If I am here teaching Harry, a pure-blood of multiple generations, the Ministry are less likely to complain that I am using magic an a non-magical home and that I'm teaching a Muggle-born at a young age so that she will be prepared for when she goes to Hogwarts."

"I'm not sure I understood that last point," Helen admitted, "but you do make some good arguments. You'll have to explain some of this terminology as we go on, but I'm assuming from what you are saying that magic is real and that what's happening with Hermione is that she is showing signs of her magic?"

"Yes. It's described as 'accidental magic' by the Ministry, though that's not entirely accurate. It's more like 'wish magic'. As a child, they want someone badly enough to wish it to happen – as you've said, things like getting out of their playpen, or summoning food towards them are what this normally entails."

Helen nodded in agreement, thinking about her experiences with Hermione over the past few months.

"As they get older they tend to lose the impulse to do this, largely because they can actually get up and go and do things themselves with relatively little effort, but children of ages two and upwards often cause things to happen when they are upset or angry instead, as their magic is uncontrolled and reacts to strong emotions. I can help Hermione control that before she goes to primary school, if it would help you.

"What normally happens when these bursts of magic occur is that the Ministry sends someone around to wipe the memories of the people it happened to, which is rather a crude way of controlling the knowledge that magic really exists.

"But I've said a lot, and I'm sure you have questions, Helen."

"You're right about that. On both counts!"

She paused for a moment to think.

"I'm certainly not averse to adopting Harry, assuming that you can convince the Dursleys to give him up," she said, "but I need to talk it over with Doug first."

"Of course." Monica agreed. "I wouldn't want you to jump into this without talking to your husband about it."

"Other than that, I imagine you'll need to live close by, and that if you're going to be tutoring Hermione then we need to set aside appropriate time for it."

"I've bought a place in Mannings Heath," Monica told her, "using my ill-gotten gambling gains."

"Oh! Of course. If you know what happens you'll be able to predict all sorts of things. Doug will be asking you who to bet on at the Grand National, I expect!"

"Well, I'm fairly sure it isn't hurting anyone, but as time goes by, we might find that things have changed. Besides, I didn't pay an awful lot of attention to sport when I was little."

"No, not at two years old, I imagine," Helen said with a giggle. "How did you remember who to bet on?"

"I cheated – I looked it up online. The Racing Post website was full of detail that I just copied down for pretty much every major event from the turn of the year until the mid-eighties."

"Website?"

"Ah, sorry. That's not happening yet. Think of it like Ceefax, if you have that, but you can basically look up anything at your leisure."

"Crikey! That sounds useful!"

"Not until the mid-nineties though, I'm afraid," Monica said. "Maybe a bit sooner for places like Universities and big corporations."

The two ladies discussed technology for about another twenty minutes before little Hermione decided that she wanted some attention, and interrupted them.

DOHPDOHPDOHPDOHPDOHPDOHPDOHPDOHP

Little Whinging, Surrey

Saturday 7th November 1981

Getting Doug Granger to agree to adopt Harry Potter turned out to be much less difficult than Monica thought it would be. Once he heard about the boy's parents being killed and his closest relatives not being given a choice about taking him in he was adamant that fostering, and then eventually adopting the poor boy was the right thing to do, even before it was explained to him about the Wizarding World and his young daughter's place in it.

Doug, Helen and Monica spent the remainder of their free time that week putting together all the necessary paperwork to register with the authorities that young Harry was coming to live with them, and then made arrangements for this visit to the Dursleys.

They selected a Saturday morning so that Vernon would be present to sign paperwork, and Monica had phoned Petunia in advance to make the appointment, noting merely that it was to discuss future arrangements for their nephew's care. Helen's sister was engaged to look after Hermione for the day and the short trip north towards London planned out.

Having never seen Petunia as a younger woman, Monica was surprised to see some of the attractiveness about her that must have brought her to Vernon's attention. The scowl had not yet become ingrained into her features, and the pinched nastiness about her appeared to be well held back in the face of visitors.

"Do come in," she invited the three of them into the living room politely, and offered them their choice of drinks.

Monica's long-held suspicions about the Dursley household were confirmed when she looked around the room. In nearly seventy years this room was going to change very little indeed.

With tea and biscuits served to her guests, and introductions and small talk finished with Petunia turned to the reason for their visit.

"So, Monica, you asked for this meeting to talk about the boy?" she began.

"Harry," Monica said. "Yes."

"I suppose you know then that he is my late sister's son, and was left dumped on our doorstep last week without so much as a by-your-leave?"

"Yes, I'm aware that your sister and her husband were murdered last week," she replied, her hackles already rising at the way that Petunia was talking about Harry.

"Yes." Petunia sniffed disdainfully.

"And we know that Lily was a Witch, and that James was a Wizard," Monica added.

"We'll not have any of that funny business going on here," Vernon interjected with a growl.

"That's quite alright, Mister Dursley," Monica assured him. "I have no intention of using any magic whilst I am here unless it's absolutely necessary. You will have realised, therefore, that I am also a Witch. Although Doug and Helen here are not blessed with magic, their daughter is, therefore they too know about the Wizarding World and can talk freely about it."

"Well I'll not be having any of that freakishness from the boy, either," Vernon insisted.

Monica smiled. It sounded like this was going to be even easier than she had thought.

"That's what we are here to discuss," she informed the Dursleys, "and, hopefully, to help you deal with the possible issues that might arise.

"You might not have noticed any magical activity from young Harry yet, having only been responsible for him for a few days, but it's likely that he will begin to evidence what I describe as 'wish magic'; that is, he will want food, or something to play with, or to be changed, and he'll unconsciously use his magic to try and get that. Perhaps he will summon a ball towards him, or something to eat, or will try and get your attention somehow – I know as a child, my parents would regularly notice that I had changed the colour of something – hair, toys, food, whatever, in order to attract their attention to me-

"Well we'll have none of that here," Vernon said firmly. "We'll simply make sure that he doesn't get those sort of urges, won't we, Pet?"

"I'm afraid it doesn't work like that, Mister Dursley," Monica told him. "You can't just stop a magical child from using their magic."

"Well what are we supposed to do about him then?" Petunia asked. "I've a boy of my own to look after that takes up most of my attention. I don't have any time spare to be attending to Harry as well."

"You shouldn't have to 'do something' about him, other than see to his needs," Helen put in crossly. "However, we have an offer for you."

"Yes," Monica continued, "if you're finding it too difficult to deal with Harry, and want to be able to focus your attentions on your own son, then Doug and Helen here are prepared to adopt him."

"Truly?" Petunia asked, stunned into surprise.

"Yes," Helen replied. "We'd much rather raise him ourselves than have him neglected because you don't have the capacity to care for him. Indeed, we'll be better able to help him control his magic as he grows, as Monica will be on hand to help out both with Harry and our own daughter."

"But what about the letter the old man left?"

"You mean Dumbledore?"

"Yes."

"I'll take the letter as well. Dumbledore doesn't have any jurisdiction in child welfare, nor should he have left Harry here without at least consulting you," Monica insisted. "If he comes round to ask where Harry is, you can either say you have no idea – you never found a child on your doorstep, just a strange letter – or you can send him to me."

"Are you sure?" Petunia asked.

"Definitely," all three replied.

Once the paperwork was produced to make sure that Harry had the right records in the regular system, the Dursleys couldn't wait to sign.

Handing Harry over was slightly more complicated, as it meant that they had to reveal that Harry was kept in the cupboard under the stairs, which led to Helen having to calm Doug down, and she and Monica exchanged glances in the knowledge that this had just put the capper on Doug's belief in Monica's tales of how Harry would have been abused had he been left with his Aunt and Uncle.