Disclaimer: I'm too young to be Rowling so there is sadly no way Harry Potter is mine…

Placing: 29 years after the war– and 6 after the first..

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sSsSsSsSs

ON THE DOORSTEP OUSIDE

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Amelia Bones had seen a lot in her career.

She had seen the worst of the worst.

Death Eater raids.

Families slaughtered by Voldemort and his cronies.

Murders.

Kidnappings.

Killings.

She had years in law enforcement.

And for long, she had thought that there could be nothing that she hadn't seen already.

At least, that's what she had thought until she had been called to the case that very moment.

"You said it's a kind of Fiendfire?" she asked partly in disbelief, her eyes locked onto the scene in front of her.

"A variation thereof, I'd say," Alastor Moody agreed and looked at the house in front of them as well. "We were alerted to the magic used by a squib living nearby. She called us when it took too long for the muggles to put out the fire. She said that she saw schemes in the flames, feared that it was something magical and called us."

Amelia frowned.

"But why would she suspect something magical at all?" she asked. "I thought the inhabitants were muggle."

Alastor shrugged.

"At least one wasn't – maybe it's even the boy who was rescued from the flames," Alastor countered and his magical eye spun towards the house. "The house is marked down on the alert list of the Oblivator's Squads."

"Muggleborn, then,"Amelia concluded and frowned at the house. "Maybe a hate-crime done by a follower of He-who-must-not-be-named?"

"Might be," Alastor agreed and looked around. "If it would have been closer to London, as it is, we're not exactly in the neighbourhood for magical activities…"

Amelia looked around.

"You're right," she agreed calmly. "This isn't the first part of England one would look for Death Eater activities."

Then she looked around.

"Can you tell me more?"

Alastor shrugged.

"The fire was most likely electrical, according to the muggles," he said. "Two victims. Mr and Mrs Dursley. There was a survivor. Dudley Dursley, the son. Six years old. The muggles said that he seemed to have been a bit… intimidated."

"Intimidated?" Amelia asked concerned.

Alastor shrugged.

"He was reluctant to say what happened in that house," he said. "The only thing the boy said that it had something to do with his cousin. It didn't make sense."

Amelia frowned.

"Cousin?" she asked. "Is there any other child or teen registered to this address?"

This time, Alastor had no answer.

The muggles he had talked with hadn't been able to answer that question as well.

"There are rumours around here that another child lived with them," he said. "But there are no official records. Not that it matters to us. We're here in case the fire was really magical and not just unusual hard to control without magic and not for possible other victims."

Amelia had to admit that it sounded cold-hearted, but Alastor was right.

They needed to know if deliberate magic had caused the flames – not if one of the possible victims was still missing.

She sighed, nodded and then stepped towards the house.

The house was nearly burned to the ground thanks to the fire, even the magical interference hadn't saved it in the end.

Amelia looked around, ensured that the temporary muggle-repelling wards had been cast and then pulled out her wand to cast spells at the house.

The readings she got back were… odd.

"It… doesn't look like accidental magic," she said and turned to Alastor who had cast his own spells. "I reads more like magical interference through an object or something like that."

The other Auror frowned as well.

"Wards, maybe," he agreed and Amelia raised an eyebrow.

"Come again?" she asked, so he elaborated.

"It looks as if the magic that kept the flames alive and particular hard to combat might have been wards," he said.

Amelia growled.

"So – somebody went and cast wards on the property that kept the flames alive and ensured a sure death for the adults?" she asked with fire in her eyes.

"No," Alastor said. "It looks more as if the wards to keep the family safe had the unintended side-effect to keep the flames in and burning."

"How?" Amelia asked bewildered.

Alastor shrugged.

"Looks as if somebody rigged the blood-wards surrounding the property to basically… self-implode. Not an easy task, but also quite easy to happen if somebody who doesn't know enough about blood-wards tries to cast them. Has happened to quite a few families in the last war with Voldemort as well."

Amelia frowned.

"I'm not following," she admitted. Wards had never been her speciality.

"Some idiots in the last war thought they could safe money by casting their own blood-wards," Alastor elaborated. "I was called to a few of those sites. Burned down houses, dead families wasn't unusual the moment the wards snapped and imploded. If that happened here, the muggles living here have been sitting on a time-bomb for years already. There's a reason why warding should be left to professionals, after all."

Amelia nodded.

Now, that Alastor had mentioned it, she remembered something like that mentioned when she was still in training.

"What a nasty way to die," she settled on saying.

The older auror grunted.

"The boy's been lucky," he said. "Must've been the farthest away from the point where the wards imploded. Otherwise, he wouldn't have survived as well."

Amelia nodded sadly.

"Why would that house have been warded?" she finally asked. "It was a muggle house and while there was a notice for the Oblivators' Squat for the general area, the child in question should have been too young to cast those wards..."

Alastor shrugged.

"The notice might have nothing to do with this house," he countered. "It's just for this area, after all – and you and I know that some notices have never been erased after the muggleborn in question either moved away or died in the last war. Too much back-lock. Maybe the previous family living here had a magical child who put up the wards or this family was related to a muggleborn who died in the last war. They're not listed in our world, so finding out might end up impossible, in the end."

Amelia nodded sagely.

She knew that while the muggleborns were registered with the ministry, their muggle-family wasn't. With the muggle-world's tendency to have hundreds of families with the same last names, it was basically impossible if the family in question was related to a muggleborn or not – magic cast on the house or no magic cast.

Nevertheless, Amelia decided to try and take a look at it anyway.

It took weeks.

Weeks of searching, shifting through records and more.

In the end, the only thing Amelia had found out was that the Dursley family might have been related to Lily Potter.

"An act of revenge, maybe," she said to Alastor. "Lily's child was the reason why You-Know-Who died, after all."

Alastor nodded thoughtfully.

"It would also explain the mention of a cousin," he said. "Whoever is raising Potter, I guess they ensured that he had regular contact with his mother's family. It would have only been decent, after all."

Amelia agreed.

Family was important.

It would have been a crime to let a child grow up without any familial connection or knowledge of their family.

There was a reason why in the magical world the closest magical relative normally ended up raising the child.

For a moment, Amelia wondered who was raising young Harry Potter, then she dismissed the thought.

She knew that the Wizarding Child Service placed the orphans with their families and monitored the muggleborn children. Amelia had gone to them after the fire to ensure that they hadn't overlooked a magical child connected to the house.

There had been nothing, which meant that while young Potter might have visited from time to time, it couldn't have been his permanent residence. And since the boy hadn't been reported as missing, she also doubted that the boy had been in the house when it imploded.

In the end, Amelia put the case down as closed, a bit sad that poor Harry Potter had lost even more of his family.

"Hopefully, his guardian knows where to find the cousin," she thought, remembering that the cousin had been taken away by muggle child services. "It would be too sad if the children won't ever see each other again because of this accident."

But sadly, this wasn't something Amelia could influence, so the only thing she could do was send a short prayer before returning to work.

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Elsewhere, on the same day the people of Privet Drive woke up to a burning house No. 4, an amused Florean Fortescue watched four children gathering at one of his back-tables.

They looked… very suspicious.

It was amusing to watch, like all little children where who tried to play secret agents.

"Can I help you?" he asked the four after they had sat down.

Immediately, a dark haired boy with a black smudge of some kind on his cheek and a blond-haired boy with greased hair eyed him up as if he was a hidden Death Eater before turning accusing glances at the only girl in their group.

"He's good," the blond girl said dreamily. "He knows a lot about the witch burnings, after all."

Both boys blinked and then turned to look Florean over again.

Florean had to stop himself from laughing at the actions of the children.

"You do?" the last boy – he looked a bit plumb and a bit more timid – asked.

"I do," Florean said while wondering why it mattered what he knew or not knew.

The girl hummed.

"I told you," she said while the black-haired boy pushed up his glasses and then asked.

"Why did some witches go and ask to be burned?"

Florean blinked, taken aback by the question.

"There was the flame-freezing charm," he said. "It's not as if it hurt them."

The boy nodded thoughtfully.

"Just like burning the dead doesn't hurt them, then?" he asked.

"I guess," Florean replied, a bit thrown by the boy.

"But what about children?" the black-haired child asked him imploringly. "Wouldn't have been the flames deadly for them? I mean, they couldn't cast the flame-freezing-charm, could they?"

That was actually a good question, one that Florean had always hated to answer.

"Yes," he said a bit sadly and even more sad that he had to say it to such a young child, nevertheless, he wouldn't lie. "Children caught in the burnings had quite a lesser surviving rate than adults."

The dark-haired boy nodded and pushed his glasses up his nose again, before opening his mouth, clearly intending to ank another question.

It was the timid boy who stopped him by kicking him in the sheen.

"No, Harry," he said. "Not relevant right now."

The boy pouted.

"But I want to know!" he objected and Florean couldn't help but smile at the childish reaction.

He had always loved children – they were refreshing even if they sometimes asked the hard questions.

"I don't mind," Florean assured the little researcher.

"See!" The boy threw the timid-looking one a triumphant smile before pulling a book out of… somewhere. Florean honestly had know idea where it actually came from. One moment, there was no book, the next, the boy sat it down in front of himself on the table.

Florean gawked, but the boy acted as if he hadn't done something Florean with all his years of knowing magic had never seen before.

The boy opened the book on a random page, before looking up at Florean with imploring eyes.

"Why did muggles even try to burn witches when it was only fifty percent effective at all?" he asked and Florean, after a look around his nearly empty shop resigned himself to answering the inquisitive questions of a five or six-year-old for the next few minutes.

Over time, Florean had to admit that the questions turned bizarre.

"What would have happened if the flames had been magically enhanced?" the boy asked "Would the spell have had the same effect or would the witches have burned?"

At that, Florean scratched his head and gave up.

"Why do you ask those questions?" he countered.

"Research," the boy said.

Florean blinked, half-amused, half-surprised at the answer.

"And why do you research witch-burnings?" he asked.

The boy did the child-version of looking shifty – which actually wanted to make Florean ruffle his hair and calling him cute instead of calling for the aurors.

"I wanna know how effective burnings could be when it comes to nargles," he explained.

Florean blinked.

"Nargles?" he asked confused.

"They hide in mistles," the girl explained immediately. "They're worse than wackspurts who make your head fuzzy."

"Ah," Florean replied amused and couldn't help remember his own children's make-belief when they had been that age.

"And you think they're bad enough that you need to burn them?" he asked the dark-haired boy.

The boy frowned and then shrugged.

"I'm still researching," he pointed out. "But I need to know if it is an option."

At that, the timid-looking boy sighed.

"No," he said decisively. "It's not. You're not turning yourself in a pyromaniac as well. You're bad enough as it is."

The dark-haired boy pouted.

"But it's just research!"

The timid-looking boy just glared at him.

"The last time you assured me that you were still doing research I found you painting the room red!" he countered, sounding more offended than angered.

Florean suppressed a snicker and wondered how the dark-haired boy's parents had reacted to their child painting a room without announcing it.

"Red keeps nargles away," the girl intercepted. "I liked the red – and Draco did, too, didn't you?"

"Hn," the blond-haired boy half-agreed, half-denied. "I like gold more."

The girl nodded.

"Gold is for wackspurts," she agreed. "There's a reason why Harry gets the nargles and not you, after all."

"Hn."

At least, Florean thought amused, they seemed to be in agreement and very fair.

"I'm still against using fire on nargles," the timid-looking boy countered and leaned backwards in his chair to frown at the rest of the children.

The black-haired child sighed.

"Oh, alright," he agreed. "No fire for nargles right now."

The girl meanwhile smiled at Florean.

"We're planning for world domination," she told him seriously. "Neville is just a bit reluctant to admit it, still – and Harry is a bit too eager to start."

"Ah," Florean agreed amused and then decided that this was the right time to actually get an answer to the question he had wanted answered when he had come to the table. "And what kind of ice cream do you want to have while you plan?"

The girl blinked innocently at him.

"What kind of ice cream is fitting for world domination?" she asked thoughtfully and a bit dreamily.

At that, Florean had to think for a moment or two.

"Chocolate, maybe," he said, guessing that most children liked chocolate. "Chocolate fits to everything. Or peppermint. I'd never say no to peppermint."

The girl nodded, her face still quite thoughtful.

"Chocolate or peppermint," she agreed. "Seems to be fitting when it comes to world domination."

The other three children agreed with her with serious expressions and regal nods.

They were adorable!

Florean would have loved to hug and cuddle each of them.

"Then I'll take a scoop of peppermint and two scoops of chocolate," the girl finally decided wisely.

The timid boy sighed, sounding a bit resigned but also clearly in agreement.

"One scoop of chocolate for me," he said. "I'll need a bit of chocolate if I'll have to moderate between Draco and Harry."

The other two boys pouted.

"Aw," Florean thought. "Rivalry, how sweet!"

Then the blond boy agreed grudgingly.

"Two scoops of peppermint for me," he said before hesitating, drawing a deep breath and then added with a grave expression as if he was breaking a law. "And one scoop vanilla. I need a bit of ordinary in my life."

The others exchanged a look.

Florean wondered if he could hold in his laughter when he saw the seriousness of all their faces while they contemplated the blond boy's choice of ice cream.

"Vanilla is very… ordinary," the timid one – Neville? – finally pointed out. "Are you sure you want vanilla? It doesn't sound like a fitting choice for world domination at all..."

The blond boy pouted.

"One scoop of vanilla won't break all of our plans – even if it doesn't fit with world-domination-ice-cream!" he countered stubbornly.

"It definitely won't," Florean agreed quickly, even more amused right now.

For a moment, the other children thought that over, but then they agreed with Florean's words with decisive nods and Florean turned towards the last boy.

The dark-haired boy sighed.

"Well, I'll take a scoop of chocolate as well, another of peppermint and… I need strawberry sauce. Nothing's better than strawberry sauce when it comes talking about nargles. It's red. It needs to be part of a nargle-discussion."

Florean tried to hide his snicker at that.

It seemed as if the young boy was a bit obsessed with the colour red, in his eyes.

The other three thought that over before the timid boy nodded.

"Fitting," he agreed.

The other boy nodded reluctantly as well.

"Sadly, yes," he agreed.

"And that's my cue!" the girl agreed dreamily and pulled out a list, smiling.

Florean couldn't read it, but she halfed the list and handed one part to the black-haired boy and the other one to the blond-haired one.

"Nargles and wackspurts I found," she declared and pulled out another list to hand it to the last boy. "And here are both for you."

Florean shook his head in amusement when he noted that the list in the dark-haired boy's hand was marked with red and the list in the blond-haired boy's hand was marked with gold.

He bit back his smile and instead went to get the ice cream while watching his little customers.

Children.

Oh, it was nice watching children play again.

It had been so long.

The last war had been hard on the magical world and those who had children hadn't let them run around and play at all.

It was nice to see it again, after all this time…

The children meanwhile had leaned closer to each other.

The last thing Florean heard before he was too far away to understand what they were talking about was another discussion about their made-up creatures.

"So, nargles," the dark-haired boy said and then started to page in his book. "I'll just close my eyes and start with one, yeah?"

"No!" the timid boy objected immediately. "The order is important! Let me take a look and I tell you where to start so that we get maximum profit. The same goes for you, Draco. We need to coordinate if we want to succeed!"

And while both, the blond-haired and the black-haired boy pouted, the timid-looking one took their lists from them and started to point out things on them.

Children.

How adorable they were, all four of them!

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Well, outside PoV. I hope I did them justice. And no, Florean Fortescue isn't suspecting anything sinister with Luna and the others because honestly, they're children and children often play make-belief.

'Till next time

Ebenbild