Harry had found both his Aunt and Uncle waiting for him to tell them what new horror he had been forced into dealing with this year and not really believing they truly wanted to know but unable to not tell them after the way they had reacted the previous summer, he'd slowly spilled out the story of his fourth year to them.
Sitting around the little round table in the pizzeria Vernon had taken them to for dinner, Petunia had surprised him by asking, "Harry? Who do you have left in your life for Dumbledore to take away? You said you're no longer friends with that girl or the redhead family. Your godfather was taken away before you ever got to know him as were the other two remaining comrades of your Father. You said he tried to kill your owl this year and she's not even human. Which tells me anyone left is somehow untouchable currently. But it doesn't tell me who they might be. So who's left?"
Harry set his slice of pizza down and took a mouth clearing sip of his soda before replying. He'd laughed hollowly and told her point blank. "The three of you and Hedwig. I think Lupin is still alive but since I'm not supposed to know that, he might as well be dead. Pettigrew is also still alive though if I'm right, he won't be for long. Nor could anyone possibly think he's someone I'd care about or be close to seeing as how he's the one who betrayed Mum and Dad. I've no one else who could be considered close by anyone's standards. Nor will I ever since I know exactly what would happen to anyone I tried to get close to. I won't knowingly make a target of people just because my enemies don't see value in human lives any more."
"The three of you are only targets because I stay with you during the summertime. Not because the three of you have ever really been all that close to me. Not to anyone who really knows us anyway. But over there, they have this idea that family is always close. Even if they themselves aren't close to their flesh and blood kin. Or have family members they wouldn't cross the street to greet. To them, the fact that you've kept me all these years, proves we're close no matter how many times I've said we don't like each other. And no, Uncle I've never said anything but that we don't like each other and I'd prefer not to return here since you don't want me to. They don't listen. Because you do take me back, you tell them I'm lying to them and we're closer than I want them to believe we are. So that qualifies the three of you as potential targets for that evil old madman."
Petunia had shared a very nervous but grim look with her husband as they finished their meal. Dudley had tried to swipe Harry's slice of the pie while he was talking and Petunia absently slapped his hand for it with her cutlery causing him to howl in outrage while Vernon just growled at his son to leave Harry's meal alone. Unlike the rest of them Petunia always ate her pizza with a knife and fork instead of her hands. And she always ordered a salad to go with it. Surprisingly, she also ordered one for Harry though not for either Vernon or Dudley.
Vernon thought his words over very carefully for the next week. Then he went to the bank, a realtor and his boss. By the end of June, the Dursley's were gone. Not even Harry knew where they had gone to. All he knew was if Dumbledore wanted to make them disappear, as he had everyone else Harry might have had a tie to, he was going to have to find them first and if he knew his Aunt and Uncle, they wouldn't make finding them easy. Because while he knew they couldn't give a rat's fart in an alley about him or his welfare, they did care about Dudley. Dudley was their world and they'd do anything and everything they could to protect him. No matter what, or who, threatened him.
Both Petunia and Vernon had tried to tell Harry they weren't so much abandoning him as they were doing their duty as parents. They owed it to Dudley, they said, to do what they had to in order to insure Dudley got to grow up. But the end result was the same whether they intended it or not. He was left here while they disappeared. The house was now his. Legally his and his alone. His uncle had signed it over to him as compensation for their leaving him to deal with the freaks on his own. He'd apologized and admitted he knew the house and land was small consolation for being left out in the cold like this. But Dudley was his son and that was the bottom line. He had to protect his son. And at least he'd have a place to live as he learned to survive without adults to provide for him. He completely ignored the fact that Harry had been pretty much doing that all his life.
So now, three days before he was due to show up at King's Cross Station and board a train bound for Scotland that only a very small percentage of the population could even see, he was sitting in his backyard on top of a huge rock under the sheltering branches of a heavily laden fruit tree contemplating what he wished to do. He knew the house here was his. His Uncle had arranged that before the family had fled the country through very obscure methods. And it was now considered to be a part of the Potter Estate. A hidden part but still a part of the Estate.
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