The hearing chamber of the Fairchild Foundation was paneled in oak, its high windows letting in the pale light of morning. At the center sat Augustus Fairchild himself, silver cane resting upright at his side. A panel of Foundation governors flanked him, quills poised, parchment ready.
Before them sat three witnesses: Harry Potter, Petunia Dursley, and Mr. Carter.
A clerk called the room to order.
AUGUSTUS FAIRCHILD: (voice calm, firm) Let us proceed. Mr. Carter, you will recount the events leading to the removal of the Dursley children from Number Four.
MR. CARTER: (straightening) On my final visit to Privet Drive, I observed the elder boy — Void Potter — in a state of pronounced lethargy. His words were sluggish, his movements dulled. I suspected he had been drugged. I requested follow-up through proper channels, and by evening, officers were dispatched. When we arrived, Void had just finished a final glass forced on him by Mr. Vernon Dursley.
AUGUSTUS: You are certain he was compelled?
MR. CARTER: Beyond doubt. Mr. Dursley's hand hovered at the boy's shoulder, and Harry testified in that moment. The boy's fear was plain.
AUGUSTUS: Very well. Sit. We shall hear from the child.
Harry shifted nervously in his chair, legs swinging above the floor. Augustus leaned forward, his voice softening.
AUGUSTUS: Harry, you are safe here. No one will harm you. Tell us — what did your uncle give your cousin to drink?
HARRY: (whispering) Glasses. Every night. They looked different… sometimes white, sometimes green, sometimes dark. I don't know what was in them. But he said… he said if Void didn't drink, he'd hurt me.
AUGUSTUS: And did Void drink them all?
HARRY: (nodding) Always. Even when it made him sick. He… he smiled at me so I wouldn't be scared, but I could see it was bad. He did it so Uncle wouldn't hurt me.
(A murmur ran through the chamber. Quills scratched furiously on parchment.)
AUGUSTUS: You are brave, Harry. Sit. Now—Mrs. Dursley.
Petunia sat rigid, her hands clasped white in her lap. Her eyes darted once to Augustus's sharp gaze, then down again.
AUGUSTUS: You washed the glasses. Did you notice anything?
PETUNIA: (voice trembling) They smelled wrong. Metal. Bitter. No matter how I scrubbed. My… my sister Amara once told me there are drinks, potions, she called them, that can heal or harm. I remembered her words. And I knew — whatever Vernon was giving that boy, it was not to make him well.
AUGUSTUS: Why did you not intervene sooner?
PETUNIA: (face tightening, voice small) Because Vernon would have turned on me. On Dudley. On Harry. I… I thought silence was the only way to survive. But when I saw Void fading, when Carter came, I could not hold it in.
(A pause. Augustus's eyes softened slightly, but his voice remained steady.)
AUGUSTUS: Your testimony will be recorded. Sit.
Carter rose once more, papers in his hand.
MR. CARTER: Sir, the Foundation has gathered accounts from neighbors, documenting shouting in the house, and statements from attending officers. We have evidence of neglect, coercion, and forced consumption of unknown substances.
AUGUSTUS: (nodding) Then we shall proceed to petition.
He struck his cane once against the floor.
AUGUSTUS: Let it be entered into record: the Fairchild Foundation will formally petition for charges of child neglect and endangerment against Vernon and Petunia Dursley. Further, we will request guardianship hearings to secure Harry Potter and Void Potter from further harm.
The clerk read the resolution back, each word etched into record.
As the chamber adjourned, Augustus leaned close to Carter. His voice was low, grim.
Arabella's Parchment
To: Albus Dumbledore From: Arabella Figg (Privet Drive Watch)
This morning I witnessed a most alarming event at Number Four.
Vernon Dursley was led from his house by Muggle police, purple in the face and shouting for half the street to hear. Petunia followed, pale as paper, with Dudley wailing like a siren.
But it was the boys who troubled me most.
Harry and the cousin—Void—were also taken, not by the police but by two well-dressed men bearing the crest of the Fairchild Foundation. They spoke to the officers with a confidence that suggested arrangements had been made well in advance.
Harry clung to Void's sleeve. Void himself moved as if through treacle—eyes clouded, steps slow—yet he kept one hand protectively on Harry's shoulder.
I cannot say where they were taken, only that the Foundation carriage drove away at speed. The neighbors speak of "child welfare" and "charity," but the air about the house has been wrong these last weeks. I have heard raised voices, and there is a bitterness to the place—like old metal in the nose.
If wizarding hands are in this, we may already be late. Please advise.
Faithfully,Arabella Figg
Dumbledore read the parchment twice, then fed the corner to the fire. The flame curled the ink into a black smile before it was gone.
"Very well," he murmured. "The time is now."
Fawkes shifted on his perch, feathers whispering like a warning.
Dumbledore's Web
By dawn, his network moved.
A quiet word in Barty Crouch Sr.'s office ("an unfortunate misunderstanding on a Muggle street—no need for Department of Magical Law Enforcement to be seen"). A second owl to Cornelius Fudge ("a delicate political matter, Cornelius; you understand the value of stability before your next luncheon"). A third to Mafalda Hopkirk—paperwork charms for "accidental magic" prepared in case anyone asked why letters had flown to Surrey like migrating geese.
On the Muggle side, Dumbledore took no chances. A handful of Ministry Obliviators in plain coats walked Privet Drive at tea-time, then again after dark. Policemen woke with headaches and a neat hole in memory where two thin boys and a shouting man used to be. Social-services clerks found their files inexplicably shuffled: case numbers exchanged, names misfiled, one sheet calmly replacing another with a copy that now said only one child resided at Number Four.
In the Foundation's oak-lined offices, clerks returned from luncheon to discover their neat stack of petitions had… evaporated. One junior secretary insisted she had just stamped a document bearing the name "Void Potter." When she opened the ledger to prove it, the line was blank. Her pen had left no mark.
By week's end, the official tale was set.
Harry Potter was safely returned to his Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon. The Dursleys were respectable again—of course they were—and the street resumed its perfect, pinched smiles.
And Void?
There was no such child in any Muggle ledger, registry, or rumor. He had never been at Number Four at all.
Fawkes watched Dumbledore seal the last of the owls, the phoenix's golden eyes dim with a sorrow that did not soften the Headmaster's hand.
Griselda Marchbanks Objects
The marble corridors of the Ministry echoed with the rap of Griselda Marchbanks's cane. She moved with purpose, sharp-eyed and sharp-tongued, clerks scrambling in her wake.
"Custody records," she ordered. "Foundation petitions. Any document bearing the name Dursley."
Scrolls came. Seals cracked. Parchment unfurled.
Too neat. Too smooth. Every initial perfect, every signature pristine.
Griselda's lips thinned. This was not the natural mess of bureaucracy. This was tidied — deliberately.
She asked, "And the other boy? The cousin? Where is he listed?"
The young clerk frowned at the page. "Other boy, Madam Marchbanks? The records only show Harry Potter."
Griselda's cane struck stone with a snap. Sparks hissed at its ferrule. "Do not play the fool with me. Two children were removed from that house. Harry Potter, and his cousin."
Blank faces. Helpless shrugs. The flutter of parchment that insisted only one child had ever been there.
That night she wrote furiously, the lamplight flickering across her ink-stained hand. By morning, her letter bore the sigil of the International Confederation of Wizards.
To the ICW Secretariat, Geneva
Two children were reported at Number Four, Privet Drive. One—Harry Potter—remains in all records. The other is missing. I ask only this: where is he now?
The ICW chamber murmured as she spoke. Quills scratched. The word missing drew furrowed brows, tilted heads, cautious whispers.
Then Dumbledore rose.
Calm. Courteous. His half-moon spectacles glimmered in the magical light. His eyes twinkled, his voice warm as honey.
"My esteemed colleague is mistaken," he said gently. "There is no missing child. There is Harry Potter, who has always resided where you know him to be. His cousin — yes, there was such a boy — but he has never lived with Harry. Quiet lad, very quiet indeed. More reserved than most children, hardly noticed by neighbors or visitors. He is with guardians appropriate to his care, safe and watched. Precisely where he is meant to be."
He conjured scrolls with a flick. Birth ledgers, tidy and unbroken. Custody forms, each signed and sealed. Reports that named only Harry in the Dursley household. All perfectly aligned.
"You see," he finished, eyes sweeping the chamber, "rumor grows like ivy in suburban streets. One child becomes two in the telling. But the records are clear. Harry Potter has always been where he should be. His cousin is elsewhere, safe."
A murmur of assent rippled through the chamber. He was Chief Warlock, Supreme Mugwump, defeater of Grindelwald. If Dumbledore said the boy was safe, then the boy was safe.
Griselda's cane struck the marble floor with a sharp crack. "You weave silk, Albus. But I can feel the seams."
The council, however, demurred. Without contradiction in the official records, the matter "did not rise" to inquiry.
When the session ended, Griselda left with fire in her chest, her cane ringing against stone.
The boy exists, she thought grimly. And if he is not with Harry, then where?
When Augustus Fairchild's inquiries began to budge Muggle offices again—when polite letters stiffened into petitions—Dumbledore tugged another thread.
A discreet Confundus on a typing pool here. A Fidelius-adjacent masking charm on a filing cabinet there. Not the clumsy sweep of a wide Obliviate, but the careful pick-work of a locksmith who knows which tumblers matter.
In wizarding circles, he used no wand at all—only his voice. "The Muggles are confused," he told a senior undersecretary at the Ministry, gravely sympathetic. "You know how they are with our matters. It will pass if we let it breathe." The undersecretary, who owed him three votes and a favor besides, nodded along.
At Hogwarts, he told himself the same story with fewer witnesses. Harry is where he must be. The other boy unsettled him. The prophecy speaks of one. He poured a cup of tea he did not drink.
Fawkes did not sing that night.
Snape Demands the Truth
The vial cracked when it hit the slate bench, potion hissing as it bled into the grooves.
"You will tell me, Headmaster," Severus Snape said, his voice low and venomous, "what became of Amara's son. Do not ask me to admire your handiwork while you call it mercy."
Dumbledore stood framed in the doorway, lamplight catching the rims of his half-moon spectacles. His face was calm, too calm.
"He lives," he said quietly. "He is safe."
Snape's laugh was short, hollow, cruel. "Safe. Buried so deep that even his name has gone thin. Is that your definition of safety? To make him a ghost before his time?"
Dumbledore's silence was heavy, his gaze unreadable. Then at last he murmured: "Come with me."
They Apparated into a grey courtyard hemmed by high brick walls. An old Muggle orphanage hunched against the wind, its windows rattling faintly in their frames. Children in second-hand jumpers darted across cracked paving stones, their breath steaming in the cold. A weary matron with a whistle hanging from her neck kept half an eye on them, calling out half-hearted warnings.
On the steps, apart from the noise, sat a boy in an oversized coat.
Void.
He did not flinch when the whistle shrilled. He did not move when a scuffed football skittered to his shoe. He sat with hands folded, still as stone. Only when a smaller child crept close, leaned against him for a breath of comfort, and then dashed away again did he stir — his head turning a fraction, his dark eyes following until the child rejoined the game.
Snape's throat closed. The boy was not broken, not shattered — but muted, dulled, smothered under weight that should never have been his.
"You've buried him alive," Snape whispered, every word laced with fury.
Dumbledore's voice was soft, but iron lay beneath. "He endures. When the time comes, he will come to Hogwarts as others do. But Harry must not be clouded. The prophecy speaks of one, Severus. One."
Snape turned, his black eyes burning. "You do love that word, don't you? Necessary. It wraps filth in silk, makes cruelty sound like wisdom. Tell me — was it necessary to make Amara's son into this?" He gestured, sharp and shaking, at the boy on the steps.
Dumbledore's gaze did not leave Void. "One day, Severus, you will understand that this was the path with least cruelty."
Snape's hand clenched white at his side. His voice dropped to a hiss. "One day, Albus, you will answer for it. For her. For him. And for every time you dressed your ambition in that wretched phrase: the greater good."
They Disapparated with a crack of air, leaving behind only the faint stir of cold wind.
A Street Put Back
By the second Sunday, Privet Drive had its rhythm again: clipped hedges, clipped conversations, life measured in bins and bills.
In the attic where the air held heat in summer and draft in winter, Harry tucked his unopened letter under a loose board (Vernon had the rest). When the house slept, he lifted it out and traced his name in emerald ink.
He pressed his palm flat over the words The Attic. It felt like a hand pressing back.
"I'll remember," he whispered to the dust and the dark. "Whoever you are… I'll remember."
Somewhere—many streets and a world away—a boy in an oversized coat sat on orphanage steps and traced a pale scar where glass had once cut his palm.
Under his sleeve, a little horned serpent flicked its tongue and settled more tightly along his wrist.
Erased from ledgers. Obliviated out of tidy minds. Filed nowhere, named nowhere.
Erased but Not forgotten.