A/N: Ok, look, time lines are tricky. In order to make this work the way I want (and to fit roughly into the time frame of the BAU), I had to bump up Harry's birthdate by twenty years (sorry!). That puts his birthday on July 31st, 2000, Voldemort's downfall in October of 2001, and places this story in November of 2006. Like I said in the first chapter, weird AU.

Whew.

Thank you to all who reviewed- It absolutely made my holidays. I'm a teacher, and therefore am on break- I'm going to try and bang out a few more chapters before the start of the new year, and then will (hopefully!) be updating on Fridays.

As always, I do not own either Criminal Minds or Harry Potter- I just like to play with the characters. As I am sans-beta, all mistakes are my own.

In a Handful of Dust

Chapter 2: Spotless

Child cases are taxing, both physically and mentally. It's too easy to get emotionally invested, pathetically simple to lose your mind of the smallest details. To cope, Reid liked to reduce those cases to their most basic and impartial parts:

Numbers.

Male, 46 chromosomes, including one y. 6 years old. Alive for roughly 1,800 hours. Birthday, July 31st. Lived in the United States for 23 days.

Eighteen hours since the team's arrival, thirty six hours since abduction. 1 in 10,000 abductions are stranger abductions. 74% of those children are murdered within three hours of abduction. By the 72 hour mark, survival chances are only a fraction of a percent.

Current chances to be located alive: roughly 17%.

Sometimes, numbers are not as comforting or impartial as Reid hoped they would be.

The light is bright and painful, and sears into his aching skull. Distracted, he has no time to react as he is hauled up by his left elbow.

The fresh air is cold and bitter, and tastes of snow. He falls when his arm is released, and the ground tastes of dirt.

"Move," the man hisses.

He cannot see- his glasses are long gone. His clothes are still damp, and shivers from cold and terror. He stands, but does not know where to move to.

"I said, move!"

Pain explodes across his back, and stars wink behind his eyes.

Harry bites his lip, and tries not to cry.

"It says here that Harry came to live with his Aunt and Uncle on November 1st, 2001. He was a little over a year old," Reid remarked aloud as he reviewed the case file. "CPS states here that the Dursleys were very reluctant to become his caretakers, citing a strained relationship between Petunia Dursley and her sister, Lily Potter."

"Why would they take him in then? Why not let the child become a ward of the state?" asked JJ, as she flipped through another one of the family files.

"It looks like they might have been coerced, or at least guilted into taking him. Petunia's parents passed away in the mid 90's, and it doesn't…look like there was any family left on the father's side. Now that's odd," Reid frowned.

"What's odd?" asked JJ, closing the file to look up at the profiler.

"Well, there's almost no information in here about Harry's father at all. He's listed here as James Potter, but there's no occupation or schooling info. It says his parents are deceased, but doesn't say when or provide any information about him at all. There's a bit more information on Harry's mom, but most of it appears to have been given to CPS by Petunia. And there's a really strange comment here that Petunia told to CPS when they took guardianship of Harry."

"Which was…?"

"'We're only going to take him in because we have to, because we're the only family he has left. But if he turns out to be as strange and abnormal as his parents, we're turning him over to the state. His parent's freakishness got them killed, and we'll have none of that in our home.'"

"That's bizarre," JJ stood up and walked over to look at the file over Reid's shoulder. "Does it say how the Potters died?"

"…No. No, now that you mention it, it doesn't say anything at all about Harry's parents. We should call Garcia."

Aaron's first impression of the Dursley home was that, prior to the murders, it must have been immaculate.

The home was a simple, three bedroom cottage just outside of the Concord city limits. The front door opened into a large living room that appeared to be lifted straight out of a Better Homes and Garden's magazine. The couches, a light blue with white pinstripes, circled around a matching area rug and faced a large, flat screen TV, mounted on the far wall. There was a fireplace that dominated the wall directly across from the front door, and the mantle was covered in pictures and various nick-knacks. Every picture one the wall was straight, every trinket placed just so, and not a speck of dust to be seen on any surface. Rossi took one look around the room and winced, before suggesting that he'd take the upstairs.

Aaron moved through the room with ease, stopping in front of the fireplace. There were dozens of photos of a young, very large, blond boy, in all stages of life. A large family photo dominated the mantle: the blond boy, about 6 years old, with his parents. After a moment, Aaron realized that there were no photos of the missing child- not one photo of Harry Potter, the Dursely's nephew. Frowning at the realization, Aaron flipped open his phone and dialed Garcia.

"Ready and willing to serve, my liege!" the overly peppy voice of the BAU's resident tech analyst warbled through the phone.

"Garcia, when did Harry come to live with his Aunt and Uncle?" Aaron asked, continuing to study the pictures.

"You know, our missing boy is one heck of an enigma. Or, at least his family is. Harry came to live with the Durselys in '01, just after his parents died."

"'01? He would have been a little over a year old then. How did his parents die?"

"That's where this poor kid's file gets all levels of crazy. It doesn't say. In fact, his dad has, like, no record of existence at all- no birth certificate, no death certificate, no marriage license, nada. His mom only existed until she was 11. We've got school records for her until that point, but after that…"

"She drops of the face of the earth," Aaron concluded.

"You've hit the nail on the head with that one," Garcia quipped cheerfully.

"Ok, Garcia, do me a favor, and see if you can find anyone, and I do mean anyone who might have known the Potter's or Lily and Petunia…?"

"Evans, sir."

"Evans as kids. Anything we might be able to find out about this. I'm starting to get the feeling that victimology is going to be the key to finding this boy."

"You've got it, your royal highness. Garcia, over and out!"

Just as Aaron closed his phone, he heard Rossi call from upstairs, "Hey, Hotch!"

Aaron walked up the stairs to find Rossi standing in the hallway, "Find anything?"

"Yeah," Rossi answered, "Something kind of bizarre." He gestured to the doors leading to the bedrooms.

"So, there are three bedrooms on this floor. There's the parent's room on the right, a kid's room on the left, and then a playroom further down the hall. But the kid's room, where the Dursely boy was shot? It only had one bed."

Aaron blinked, "Maybe there's another bedroom downstairs?"

"That's what I thought, too," answered Rossi. "But then, I opened this closet, and…"

Rossi pushed open the door.

It was a normal linen closet. Three shelves, about three feet off the ground, contained towels and extra sheets. But, under the shelves, a small nest of tattered blankets and pillows took up the floor. A few broken army men, a couple of broken crayons, and a teddy bear that was missing both an eye and an arm, were nestled in the sheets. The word's "Hary's Roome" were scrawled on the back wall of the closet.

Aaron's mouth dropped open and he could feel the blood drain from his face. After a moment of stunned silence, he turned to Rossi and asked:

"Who is this kid?"

When he wakes, the world around him is dark. His back aches, and he is hungry. When he looks up, he can make out the blurry slats of his prison.

He is back under ground.

He tries to call up to his captor, but his voice, shredded from screaming, only squeaks.

There is laughter from above, before a voice says, "Do you want to know why?"

Harry shivers. It is getting colder outside. The voice continues, high pitched and thread.

"Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live."

A/N: Ahh, a motive. As always, please R&R!