Hans had felt a slight sting as he entered the Ministry of Magic from the Floo. While the wards set up to repel Grindelwald's forces had indeed not been removed as he'd suspected, it would appear that some sympathizers who'd decided to help Grindelwald's followers gain employment following Grindelwald's defeat had also erected a modification to the Ministry's wards which negated the Anti-Grindelwald wards sometime after the war was over. After waiting for Harry who somehow managed to come out of the Floo in a skid that carried the boy several feet along the highly polished floor of the atrium, the both of them headed over to a check-in desk which was manned by an exceedingly grumpy looking old man.

Harry's wand was processed with little problem, but as his wand was processed, the old man who was registering the wands said "This wand was reported stolen by some Knockturn Alley punk over a month ago. I won't report it, but you don't want to be caught with it by anyone else. 'Specially since the punk was found dead last week". With that, the old man handed the wand back and speared a blank slip of paper on the spike that held the information on the visitors' wands at his desk before giving him a surreptitious hand sign which he'd found himself automatically returning despite the fifty years since he'd last made that particular hand sign.

After the strange encounter at the desk, Hans and Harry disappeared into the particular bereaucratic hell that was the Ministry of Magic.

Peter Pettigrew sighed as he slipped the wand out of the drunkard's pocket as he "helped" him find his rooms. That was the third wand he'd had to steal in a month. While he had a perfectly good wand on his person, there was no way in hell he would use it. With the rate he'd been losing wands lately, odds were he'd somehow manage to lose his Master's wand the way he had the wands he'd had the misfortune of losing on the way to finding his master and bringing him the addlepated Bertha Jorkins.

He'd been having the absolute worst luck with wands ever since he'd lost the first one in Germany.

The room that contained the British Wizarding law library was exceedingly dusty and seldom visited by anyone whose profession didn't involve dealing with the law. Due to the fact that wizards had a habit of passing laws that negated a previously passed law instead of simply repealing the first law, the wizarding legal code was spread across hundreds of volumes. Fortunately for anyone who wanted to have even a shred of hope of finding out whether something was actually legal or not, someone had included a blank volume that would magically pull up any law that was related to the subject of one's search and display it on its pages.

Harry sighed in relief when he found that the law he'd been looking for had stated exactly what Hermione's outraged comments had said it did when Hermione had come across reference to it when she had been searching for information on an obscure 18th century Dark Lord who'd taken over the government for a decade for a history essay. Even better, the magical search he did for the bigoted law he planned on taking advantage of didn't turn up a law negating it, meaning that it was still on the books.

It was ironic really, but the protections afforded to a pet were far stronger than any protections the Muggleborns'd had at the time the law allowing one to keep a muggleborn as a pet was passed and the penalty for killing a pet had been higher than the penalty for killing a human being below a certain social class prior to the 1850s. The first real muggleborn protection laws were passed near the end of the 18th century, nearly half a century after the law allowing one to keep a muggleborn as a pet had been passed.

"The law is there, but..." Harry said to his companion, starting to have cold feet now that this wasn't a theoretical situation that might keep his relative close to him, and could actually happen.

"We do this," Harry's great-uncle said, putting his hand on Harry's shoulder as if to give him comfort.

"You know they won't let me in their country otherwise, seeing as I've got this..." Harry's great-uncle continued, tapping his old tattoo. "If we don't do this, I just go back to getting in trouble in Germany."

Hans Evans watched as Harry got the forms that were necessary to register him as a pet and started filling them out. He hadn't gone into this without a great deal of thought on the matter. He'd spent most of the night thinking on the pros and cons of his youngest brother's grandson's proposition and had decided to go through with it in the end. He'd almost snuck off into the night on two different occasions, but he'd gone down and met Harry at breakfast in the end. On the one hand, becoming his niece's son's pet on paper was both utterly insane and utterly humiliating, but on the other, it was a rather brilliant way to legally do an end-run around a number of laws.

While he did indeed have his own reasons for allowing his niece's son to register him as a pet, the fact that he'd probably just fall into old habits and get in trouble if he went back to Germany was true. He may have been using Harry to a degree, a great degree, but part of him did want family around. Part of him did want someone there to keep him out of trouble. If becoming Harry's pet on paper helped that happen, some good might come of it.

To keep out of trouble, he would have to stay out of Germany and hopefully have someone there looking out for him to make sure that trouble from the past didn't find him. Both objectives would be met if he stayed in Britain where he might be able to rejoin wizarding society, because he now had a wand and nobody knew who he was.

While Wizarding Britain had rather lax laws when it came to visitors who were allowed to stay for a year and a day before they either had to leave for a period of a year and a day or were forced to the margins of society and forced to depend on the kindness of their hosts, immigration to Wizarding Britain was a drawn out and utterly trying process. A process he wouldn't be able to make it through because his blood status wouldn't protect him from his previous loyalties. Being Harry's pet would circumvent immigration entirely and allow him to live in the country without going through the "vetting" process that more often than not depended on one's ability to pay the necessary bribes to the right officials.

Not only would being Harry's pet get him around immigration, but it would allow him to walk the halls of Hogwarts and learn the secrets the school hid within. Hogwarts, which was as protective of its secrets and his own alma mater had been and not normally open to those who hadn't attended the school. Especially not in the century since the Tri-Wizard tournament had been discontinued and the ties between Europe's three schools had pretty much disintegrated.

After those who were in charge of Durmstrang had forbidden muggleborns from attending the august institution a few centuries back, Beauxbatons had picked up their slack in Europe, and the school in Outer Mongolia had picked up their slack on the Asian continent. While he'd been born in Durmstrang's catchment area, it had been Beauxbatons who had sent him his invite. Like his sister, who'd been born directly before him and was his only magical sibling, he'd been born and raised in Germany aside from the seven years he'd spent in the South of France attending Beauxbatons. Like many in Europe, including some Hogwarts students, he had joined Grindelwald's forces upon his graduation, making his way up in the ranks until he'd joined one of Grindelwald's top-flight strike teams.

While Grindelwald had valued the wizard, regardless of blood status, over the muggle, the reality was that those whose blood was purer tended to rise in the ranks while muggleborns who had joined tended to stagnate in the lower ranks. Possessing ambition, he had disassociated himself from his muggle past in the hopes of rising in Grindelwald's ranks, pretending to belong to the now defunct Evans family of Britain rather than of the muggle Evanses. His sister, who had never joined Grindelwald, had never been ashamed of and had never hidden her heritage. Because his sister hadn't hidden her past, he'd hidden his relationship to his sister.

Things had come out one day when he'd slipped up and said too much to his family, and that had been that. Until now, until Harry, his family had cut him out of their lives. While he'd tried to keep track of them over the years, he hadn't seen or spoken to anyone in his family more than three times total since the war.

"How much do you weigh?" Harry asked, cutting through his great-uncle's musing on the past.

"Uh, about eighty kilograms." he replied after thinking about it a bit. He hadn't weighed himself in a good long while.

Dumbledore frowned as he opened his eyes to find himself lying on a bed in an unfamiliar and strange smelling room. As he listened, trying to divine what was going on, a loud and regular beeping filled his ears. Looking over, he found that the source of the beeping was a strange muggle device. As he lifted his arm with the intention of pushing the machine away from his head, he discovered that his hand was shackled to the bed.

"I wouldn't try apparating," a seemingly disembodied voice said. "The police got you fair and square, and that law you helped pass regarding escaping from the custody of muggle law enforcement who've caught you for breaking muggle laws will make you wanted in the wizarding world as well."

"Funny," the voice continued. "If I remember correctly, that law was meant to affect only muggleborns since they were about the only ones who would have enough respect for the police to allow themselves to be caught rather than apparating away and going unpunished."

"What?" Dumbledore asked.

"Seems that the father of a first year who died at school back during the Sixties reported you for kidnapping because the boy's non-custodial mother had been the one who'd given permission for her son to attend Hogwarts and he hadn't." the voice said.

"Who?" Dumbledore asked. Wondering who was in the room with him because he couldn't see them.

"Just someone who will be very happy to see justice done in this case." the voice said. "Seems you have quite the knack for causing harm without meaning to."

"Being the son of a half-blood and a muggleborn in Slytherin was bad enough without your pet Gryffindors making my life a living hell simply because I was a Slytherin. Your refusing to rein them in led to me leaving the society that was my birthright." the voice that seemed to be coming from the chair that was against a nearby wall continued. "I managed to make a good life for myself since then though."