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London[1998]
–Damian Hawthorne–
He sighed as he held onto two blankets, with a pillow, hurrying as he moved to a spot he had found during his mindless roaming around the city. As it turns out, there was nothing open this late at night, and if it was, he could not find it.
He spotted some people out at this time, but they were mostly of the shady kind, so he did not go anywhere near them. This worked out for him because it allowed him to move about stealthily, without much risk of bumping into someone.
He was lucky that the store he broke into did not have much in the way of modern security, like motion sensors, but he still felt bad so he did not steal anything more than these blankets and the pillow.
These were the cheapest kind as well. He memorised that store and mentally noted to make sure that he would compensate them ten times for these blankets, but with all the turmoil already in his mind, he really needed a win of some sort, even if it was just something comfortable to help him sleep properly.
He was somewhere near the Dursleys' house, and since he hadn't yet decided on what to do with the whole situation, he was going to stay near. For some reason, Calm Mind, something that should have, for all intents and purposes, cooled off the rage in his mind before it could bubble out, was not working properly when he met the Ancient One.
That told him two things. That the Ancient One expected the anger to bubble over into violence. Secondly, the Ancient One could somehow tamper with his enchantments or had something to dampen their effect, without even touching them, which was terrifying.
Yet expected for someone holding onto a literal shard from the Big Bang, ruling over a fundamental aspect of the universe for literal centuries.
Within minutes of walking on auto-pilot, he reached the place where he was going to stay for the night. It was a pretty densely forested park, with a tent already placed pretty deep into the woods.
The flimsy metal of the tent made for poor enchantment material, but he'd already woven in some basic enchantments on that thing. An illusion layer, meant to keep prying eyes off of it, along with heat generation on the inside, with a nice proximity detection enchantment to finish off the package.
It was not pretty but it was better than what he'd expected to come up with, especially this late at night. He was lucky he ran into an adventure/hobby shop which had cheap camping tents like these just lying around.
He was still pretty tiny so size was not an issue for him. He picked up the one he could carry the most ergonomically and ran with it, quite literally. He stole the thing, after all. Setting this up did not take much but just the mental effort of setting this up, on top of the already stressful day, had taken its toll, as he just went to sleep the moment his head hit the pillow.
With no stores open, he did not have the opportunity to get some hot food into his stomach, but he'd already drunk milk and that was fine for now. He will get some food tomorrow morning.
__xx__
–Albus Dumbledore—
He appeared in a flash of fire, Fawkes flaming away a moment later, as he took a look around his surroundings, satisfied with finding no muggle nearby. Changing or erasing memories was just a spell away for him, but he would rather not have to do it at all.
With a snap of his finger, his robes transformed into what he liked to call as muggle appropriate apparel before walking out of the darkness of a tree. This particular house has been empty for years, and was being used as his preferred spot of arrival, whenever he came here to check on the Blood Wards.
Even after all these years, he was still nowhere close to understanding them. It frustrated and relieved him in equal measure. It frustrated him because he liked to think of himself as a scholar at heart and to have something so magnificent and powerful in front of him, and not understanding it after years of research was vexing, to say the least.
It also relieved him because if he, after years of research, could not find a way to break it or tamper with it in some way, then Tom, whenever he would come back, would not be able to do so as well.
He looked at the moon overhead, as he staved off the headache it brought whenever he found himself awake at his ungodly hour, and began walking in the direction of the house on the edge of the street.
It was only last year he had been able to get around the no foreign magic clause built into the Blood Wards, and installed a miniature version of the Magical Net all over Britain, this one being infinitely easier to run because it just fed off of the energy from the Blood Wards instead of expensive Magic Crystals.
That same Magical net had gone haywire for a split second, informing him of a strong magical presence near the Blood Wards, ringing alarms in his dwelling, waking him and Fawkes up, who had not been pleased with the alarm, as evidenced by the fact that it was just a pile of ash, waiting to be thrown into the trash by Tibsy whenever she woke up.
And judging by the way Fawkes left as soon as they arrived, he had a hunch that he was going to rely on the old fashioned method of apparition to go back to Hogwarts.
Reaching the door of the last house, which was noticeably not maintained as well as the other houses on the street, he knocked on it three times in quick succession.
It was rather late and he would rather not have disturbed her at all but the circumstances were rather odd, and while the Wards did confirm the presence and well being of Young Harry, he would rather hear from Figgs, if anything odd happened nearby.
He had to knock multiple times, in increasing order of strength, to get her attention. She must have been sound asleep, as he finally heard feet shuffling behind the door. He waited patiently for her to arrive, while he, in the back of his mind, poked and prodded at the Blood Wards that recognised, categorised, and then ignored his existence.
He had never seen such a, for the lack of a better word, sentient Ward structure in his life and he had been to some places. Magical Ruins for example, still held magic, that would revolutionise the current understanding of wizard magic, or threaten to destroy the current status quo of the wizarding world.
Sadly, the chances of both of those things happening were roughly equal, which is why, the ICW, under his leadership, was issuing fewer and fewer licenses to explore the Magical Ruins found.
A gradual decline over decades meant the wizarding world would not experience the whiplash of sudden change in policies and it would also reduce the chances of dangerous magic being exposed to the rather destructive minds of Dark Wizards.
The door opened after a while, as Areballa Figgs looked up at him with squinty eyes, "Albus?"
He smiled, "I'm terribly sorry to disturb your sleep right now but I don't suppose you heard anything tonight?
….
…
As she closed the door on him–he had chosen to stand outside instead of further disturbing her rest in order to make some tea for him—he stayed in his position for a moment before turning around and briskly walking to the place where the Sensor was located.
It was a small trinket, designed to look like a small rock, buried near the playground, right next to the kids' swing, so that if anybody happened to find it, they would mistake it for a rock.
He reached the end of the street rather quickly, going to his brisk steps and the closer he got, the more it worried him because he was sensing some magic, raw and chaotic, reminiscent of accidental magic, and that was a very bad sign when it came to anything related to Harry Potter.
Accidental magic only occurred when kids were in danger, before any formal training and for something like that to happen here meant that either Harry was in danger before or he was so excited, feeling something intensely emotional that his magic responded in some way.
Either way, it warranted investigation.
He stopped and took out his wand to cast multiple charms, as soon as he reached the small park. The magic was very strong right next to the swing, and he fought the urge to cast diagnostic spells as he summoned the sensor net from the ground, his eyes widening as the rock crumbled into dust before it could reach him, having been fried inside out because of the magic.
"What happened here?" He whispered to himself, casting diagnostic spell after spell to get some idea as to what happened here and why the Blood Wards did not react in any meaningful way despite the threat being on Harry's front door.
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