OK, this will be the next story after 3&7, because I had the urge to write a 'tell Magical Britain to deal with their own problems and head off to somewhere like Oz, the States etc' story. The next chapter of 3&7 is about half done but I couldn't get this idea out of my head until I laid down a few chapters.

Harry is a precocious genius like his mother was and remembers everything back to his birth perfectly. He has used Petunia's fears of being seen as anything but perfectly normal to wrangle better treatment and decent amounts of food out of the Dursleys so he's not the frail little waif in rags Dumbledore expects him to be. Both he and Hermione have also used their brilliance to leave ordinary students way behind them, so they're about six years ahead of anyone else their age at school. Auntie Minnie's conscience has made her deliver Harry's letter to him herself and be a little more honest with the Grangers because she felt guilty about failing Lily and saw her in Hermione. For all that she is shocked to find that Harry and Hermione already know each other as they went to the same school for three years.

Petunia and Dudley aren't as bad in this story, but Vernon and Marge are. Dumbledork, Snape and most of the Weasleys are still bottom feeders.

And yes, the basic structure of the culture, familiars and the like of this world will be the same as my other HP stories, because that's what works in my mind, so some will no doubt complain that this is just rehashing them.

Usual disclaimers, no rights to anything from JKR's stories.

While she wasn't a patch on her younger half sister, Petunia Dursley had been bright enough to quickly recognise that her nephew was just as much of a precocious genius as Lily had been, that was why she grudgingly accept the validity of the veiled threats in his barbs about the neighbours asking why he was called Freak and looked so different from the rest of the family even before he started school.

Unfortunately she hadn't managed to do much more than stop Vernon and their Dudley leaving marks when they hit the boy and calling him Freak in front of anyone else though, and it had been a major fight to get Vernon and Dudley to accept that they had to give him Dudley's second bedroom when the boys started school because they couldn't afford to have anyone else find out that the boy lived in the cupboard under the stairs.

Food and the basics were under her control though so Petunia made sure that Harry had enough simple food to keep him healthy and stop him looking as though he was starved, and bought him the cheapest shoes and clothes she could for school, but she was cutting down Dudley's old clothes for the boy's other clothes until he was big enough to do that himself to avoid too many fights about how much they were spending on him.

Harry would never admit in front of Uncle Vernon, but he'd been learning yoga and meditation techniques from the Indian family down the street since he was four. This helped him control his temper and made it easier to learn other things. This in turn helped get his outbursts of wild magic that came when he was angry or afraid under control, so the old man with the long hair and whiskers who'd left him here hadn't come around to bind his magic and wipe out all their memories of what happened since before he started school.

By necessity, Harry had created an exercise regime based on running away from, dodging and fighting off his cousin and other bullies after he started school and was spending more time away from Privet Drive. Combined with getting enough food, this worked surprisingly well to build him up and keep him healthy.

Of course there was an ugly scene when Harry started school and turned out to be by far the brightest pupil there because Vernon, the idiot, beat him and tried to force him to admit that he'd cheated to do better than Dudley. It took a reminder of what happened to grown ups who abused children and that Harry obviously took after his mother, the genius, to make Vernon back down. Harry advanced through his lessons so fast that Vernon had to give up on his decision to force him to give Dudley his homework because they were learning different things within a few weeks, and totally different subjects after Harry moved up to Primary School when they started back after Christmas. Harry was still made to help Dudley with his homework, but Petunia insisted that Dudley do most of the work himself because he wouldn't learn anything if Harry did everything for him and she wasn't going to have her son grow up an uneducated fool, even if that was the way they did things at Smeltings.

Vernon didn't really have any grounds to argue about Harry starting his secondary education when he was eight, because the selective school that offered him a place was covering all the young prodigy's fees. The biggest costs to them were his bus fares to and from school every day, but they'd had to reorganise his chores to work around his longer school hours due to the hour or two he spent on buses each day. Harry used that time on the buses for meditation and study. The selective school was where he met his best friend Hermione Jean Granger, normally known as Jean. Jean was another prodigy who'd breezed through her Eleven-Plus at seven, but she was a year ahead of him because she was ten months older. He and Jean bonded with one another when they met, much like he had with Luna when they were babies, because not only were they both child prodigies, they also shared other abilities that no-one else had.

They didn't really understand what these abilities were until Jean and her parents were visited by a Professor McGonagall on her eleventh birthday to offer her a place at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, but that's when it was explained that they were magical! Harry had always been told by Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia that magic didn't exist, but he never really believe them, and now he had proof that they'd been lying. Jean's parents were fairly well off and they bought every reference book they could find on magic and the magical world in their shops, so he and Jean had been learning everything in those books for the last ten months.

Harry had taken his GCSEs at ten, and Dudley didn't like it when the results of the Eleven-Plus he did at eleven were compared to what Harry got at seven and found wanting. Harry was tempted to add a dig about the fact that his best friend had aced her A-Levels at eleven, but he realised that that would just prompt beatings from Dudley and Uncle Vernon so he kept quiet.

Petunia was just relieved that Vernon and Dudley were out at a cricket match on the boy's eleventh birthday when that Professor McGonagall delivered the boy's invitation to attend the magic school Lily had gone to….. and she didn't hesitate to agree when the old battleaxe suggested that she take the boy to get everything he needed to go to the magic school. She knew that Vernon didn't want him going there, but the tension at home had been getting worse and worse since Harry started at that selective school three years ago and it peaked when he showed up Dudley by breezing through his GCSEs at ten when Dudley just scraped through on his Eleven-Plus, so having him away in Scotland for nine or ten months a year would hopefully calm Vernon down enough for them to get through the other two or three months without too many problems.

Harry recognised the lady who took him to get his things for the magic school from the night he'd been dumped on the Dursleys' doorstep and he could see that she was nervous, it was as if she was worried about being caught doing something she shouldn't aught to actually…. She also kept looking at him as if she thought something was wrong and was worried about that. As soon as he had changed into better clothes and was ready to go out, she walked him over to Missus Figg's in the next street.

Their destination was no great surprise for Harry really, as he'd observed some of Missus Figg's unusual 'cats' watching him with far more intelligence than cats should have and had seen that she was sort of like him, so he knew that she had something to do with magic. Professor McGonagall explained along the way that they would be using something called a 'Flue' to get from Missus Figg's to the magical shops. She also explained that Missus Figg was what they called a 'Squib'….. someone from a magical family who didn't have magic….. but they'd registered her house as the home of a magic user to cover up any magic occurring around him….

Harry looked at her as he debated whether he could trust her, then leant in and whispered that Missus Figg did have magic, it was just that someone had done something to stop her using it, like they had to him. Minerva McGonagall stared at him for a minute, thinking about his mother's brilliance and his father's prodigious abilities that were at least in part from being descended from one of, if not the, most powerful magical families in Britain and nodded. If anyone could see that someone's magic was bound, the son of James and Lily Potter would most likely be the one. When they reached Missus Figg's and she was fussing over Harry, Minerva cast some discreet scans over her that confirmed what Harry had told her, Arabella Figg was no Squib. She wasn't a strong witch by any means but she was definitely a witch, however someone had bound her magic to convince everyone that she was a Squib….. And the memories that had come back to Minerva to make her take Harry's Hogwarts letter to him herself when she saw his name and address on the letter made her fairly certain who that was, Albus Bloody Dumbledore!

That brought to mind another young witch who hadn't seemed quite right when she visited her ten months ago, and the daughter of Lily's best friend who was struggling because she'd lost her mother eighteen months ago, so she left young Harry with Arabella while she apparated off to collect the girls. She had been more honest with Hermione Granger's parents than she was supposed to about their world when she visited them last year because the precocious little witch had reminded her so much of Lily Evans, so it didn't take much to convince them that it would be a good idea to let one of young Hermione's professors show her the best things to get for school. She hadn't been entirely honest with them when she told them that school funds were allocated to get the Muggleborn students what they needed to start at Hogwarts, but she would take the money for that from her own vaults if necessary. She also collected Luna Lovegood before she returned to Arabella's house, she'd had no trouble getting Xeno to agree for her to take Luna out for the day because he had been off with the Pixies most of the time since they lost Pandora.

The spark she saw between Harry, Hermione and Luna when the girls arrived, and even more so Harry telling her that Hermione was his best friend and Luna had been a special friend since they were babies confirmed that she'd done the right thing, so once she got over the shock she cast a compulsion on Arabella not to say anything to anyone about their visit and glamours over herself and the children before making sure that everyone was holding hands and flooing to the Leaky Cauldron. When they arrived, she quickly led the children out the back to the portal into Diagon Alley and took them straight to Gringotts, where she used her blood to identify herself and asked to see her account manager, Snorri. What most of Magical Britain didn't know was that the Druid Houses were all handled by senior account managers who were affiliated with the Gringott family as the Druid Houses maintained close ties to the Goblin Nations. That was why Snorri's eyes widened and he called for someone else as soon as he saw Harry.

When Over Chieftain Gringott the Seventh, Leader of the Goblin Nations, Director of the Gringotts Bank and the World's most powerful goblin arrived and looked into Harry, seeing what had been done to him, his rage was a terrible thing. He then looked into Minerva McGonagall and the other children who were with them and saw that they'd been interfered with as well, so he brusquely ordered all of them to be taken to the time chamber to be seen to by their best healers, curse breakers, mind magic sages and teachers. The goblins knew what he meant by that so Minerva and the three children were hustled out of the room as Gringott barked orders at Snorri.

The time chamber was something that was very rarely used because the power needed to activate the runes for the chamber was colossal, far more than what it took to power all of Gringotts London's wards, but time was compressed so much inside the chamber that a day inside the chamber was only a minute outside, and this gave the Goblin Nations a chance to get ahead of potentially world changing events. More than a few of the goblins and humans who were racing about making preparations for this were wondering what monumental event had arisen to call for the chamber to be activated and trying to make sense of what was going into the chamber, all the more so when the human female and children were led in and Over Chieftain Gringott himself joined them in the chamber before it was activated, but of course they received no explanations at their level.

The first order of business inside the chamber was the removal of the abomination that Harry had been carrying since the night that his parents were killed by that strange looking man, along with all of the bindings and compulsions that had been put on the four of them. Then the healers dealt with their other health issues while the Leader of the Goblin Nations gave Harry, Hermione and Luna mainly a history lesson of their world (though Minerva also learnt much that she hadn't know before too).

The first item of note was the fact that the Magical world was over three thousand years old and Harry's family had played a significant role in its development since its inception, because Harry wasn't entirely human, in fact none of them were. Gringott told them how the aes sídhe (both the Tuatha Dé Danann and Fomorians) had mixed their blood with the most magically powerful Druids of the emerging Celtic people, in an attempt to lead the rising humans in a better direction than they appeared to be going in. Of the Druids that the aes sídhe mingled with, the bloodlines that were to become the Potters over two thousand years later were among the strongest and most progressive, and they helped lead the Celtic people to greater heights than they would have achieved otherwise. This was why the Potters were one of the most powerful families, both magically and politically, in the Magical world.

At this point Gringott had the three children do inheritance tests to determine what they needed to be taught to best prepare them for what was in front of them, and even he was surprised by what the inheritance tests revealed. Gringott had known that Harry was heir to the Potter, Peverell and Gryffindor families (along with Le Fey through the Potter line and Emrys through the Gryffindor line), with all the rights and responsibilities that that entailed, but Lily Evans had never been tested, and through her he was also the true heir of Salazar Slytherin. Gringott had always known that Tom Riddle, AKA Lord Voldemort and the Dark Lord, was not the Heir of Slytherin as he claimed, as he was in fact descended from one of Salazar Slytherin's younger non-magical sisters, but without anyone from the right bloodline to test they had not managed to identify who the true heir was until now. This made Harry, as Head of two Most Noble and Most Ancient and two Senior Noble and Most Ancient Druid Houses, plus the Heir to a third Most Noble and Most Ancient Druid House, the most powerful political figure in Magical Britain.

But that wasn't the only surprise, as Hermione was revealed to be the true heir of not only the Junior Noble and Ancient Druid House of Dagworth-Granger which Gringott had suspected from her name, but the Senior Noble and Most Ancient Druid House of Hufflepuff. Once again, Gringott had expected Luna to be Heir to the Junior Noble and Ancient Druid House of Lovegood and Most Ancient Druid House of Cathbad, but she was also Heir to the Senior Noble and Most Ancient Druid House of Ravenclaw. That meant that between them they had two (nearly three) Most Noble and Most Ancient, four Senior Noble and Most Ancient, two Junior Noble and Ancient Houses and one Most Ancient Druid House, and all four of the Hogwarts Founders were included in that. With the spark that most in the chamber could see between them, it was obvious that these children were going to become a major force in their world.

When they came out of the time chamber nearly five hours later, Harry, Hermione and Luna were physically nearly a year older and in their natural states they were markedly different from the way they were when they went in, because they'd been training hard under goblin growth potions for over nine months, as well as learning everything they could about the history, culture and magic of their world. Minerva had also been learning more Wizarding and Goblin magic so that she would be able to better protect herself and the children against Dumbledore and others, not to mention learning how to call and use the magical Myddril heirloom weapons of the House of Ross.

Another change for Harry was the fact that in his natural state he no longer looked like a younger version of his father with green eyes. That had been what Minerva had been concerned about when she first saw him, because she knew that his natural look was far closer to his mother's, dark auburn hair with copper highlights, his mother's features and green eyes. She'd also known that he'd acquired the Blacks' metamophmagus capabilities through his paternal grandmother Dorea, but he'd been locked into mirroring his father's appearance except for his mother's eyes.

They didn't trust the influence Dumbledore had over Garrick Ollivander, but unfortunately they had to play along for now so Harry used what he was taught in the chamber to replicate the effects of the spell Dumbledore had cast over him to mask his true magical signature when they went to Ollivander's to get their wands. Ollivander could see a witch or wizard's magic and this was what he used to match them to his wands, but Dumbledore had also interfered with him so that he accepted the false magical signature that the spell conjured. That was why Harry was matched to the holly and phoenix feather wand that Dumbledore had intended him to be. It wasn't a proper match for him but it worked well enough due to the Slytherin and Peverell blood that Harry shared with Tom Riddle….. in fact it probably worked better than Dumbledore would have wanted because the meddling old bastard didn't know about Harry's Slytherin (or Peverell hopefully) bloodlines.

They had discussed the fact that Dumbledore was obviously setting up Harry to become some sort of sacrificial goat to Riddle, or rather Lord Voldemort as he called himself. There was no way that Dumbledore could have missed the foul emanations of Riddle's soul fragment which had been left on Harry as a soul anchor when Riddle tried to kill him, and from the enquiries he had been making over the last ten years, he obviously knew what soul anchors were.

Therefore his plan appeared to be to engineer a situation where Riddle managed to kill Harry and the soul anchor attached to him so that once the rest of the soul anchors had been destroyed he could swoop in and vanquish another so-called Dark Lord to cement his place as the 'Leader of the Light' as he loved to call himself. Obviously these plans would be jeopardised if Harry were to somehow become strong enough to defeat Riddle himself, so he'd bound Harry's magic and set it up so that Harry would be matched to a wand that would not only be ineffectual against Riddle's wand due the feather it had as a wand core being from the same phoenix as Riddle's, it would also be a bad match for Harry's magic so that it wouldn't work properly for him. This would have the added benefit (for Dumbledore) of hampering Harry's ability to learn anything that could help him against Riddle.

They used a variation of the spell to prevent Ollivander recognising that Hermione and Luna were the current Lady Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw, which of course meant that while the vine and dragon heartstring and apple and unicorn hair wands they were matched to were closer for them than the holly and phoenix feather wand was for Harry they still weren't perfect matches. For any powerful casting they would be using their heirloom weapons that had core materials which channelled the family magic when they were bonded to the Heads of their houses though, so the less than perfect wand matches weren't of any great importance. Harry and Luna were also carrying their mothers' wands, which were better matches for them.

Amelia Bones, Director of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, had been asked to cone to Gringotts with all possible secrecy and haste when Harry and the others came out of the Time Chamber, and the request to bring her ward, Susan Bones, Heir to the House of Bones, to determine whether she had been tampered with as well ensured that she did so. She was relieved when Susan was proven clear of bindings and compulsions, but furious when she discovered that she wasn't, and nor had Harry Potter, Minerva McGonagall, Luna Lovegood and the supposed Muggleborn girl Hermione Granger been. Her fury increased when Gringott shared the documents that Lily Potter had left with him, along with the Potters' wills that Albus Dumbledore had used his power of the Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot to have sealed the day after the Potters were killed, the same day he'd had himself proclaimed Harry Potter's Magical Guardian in the Wizengamot, and Harry shared memories of events of his life up until now.

Amelia immediately initiated an investigation into the incarceration of the now Duke Black, because Gringotts' records showed that he could never have been found guilty of the crimes he was accused of and Harry's memories showed that the main so-called evidence against him was false, and sent trusted people to retrieve him from Azkaban to prevent any 'accidents' happening to him before he could be properly tried. She instructed the Aurors she sent to Azkaban to remove any trace of their visit from the minds of the warden and guards there to prevent word getting out.

She also arranged to be taking Susan in to get her wand at the same time Minerva was there with Harry Potter and the other two girls, so that she could observe what was happening and counteract the compulsion to tell Dumbledore what wand Harry Potter was matched to.

Aside from the mandatory text books that they had to get, the rest of the children's school supplies were of far greater quality than what other students were getting. Their trunks appeared to be much the same as other students' trunks, but if you could get inside (which only they and those they trusted could of course), they had more space and facilities than many of the great families' homes. They were also active runic time chambers that worked on a eleven to one ratio, so they could get eleven hours' worth of training or study (or rest) for every hour that passed on the outside.

Harry, Hermione and Luna's 'pets' were also something that few people had ever seen, as they were Potter familiars. Harry's was the Head of the Potter Family's Bennu familiar, in this incarnation her name was Hedwig and her 'public' image was that of a Snowy Owl (a male Snowy Owl for some reason). The Potter familiars recognised the bonds between Harry, Hermione and Luna, so Hermione's and Luna's official 'pets' were Mngwas. Hermione's was a tom who answered to Crookshanks and Luna's was a female who answered to Bastet… Another female, Mafdet, was also bonded to Harry (all Potters and their mates had Mngwa protectors), but Mafdet had agreed to stay with Susan to protect her. Crookshanks and Bastet were quite capable of protecting Hermione and Luna, and while Hedwig could do so for Harry, Efa and Emyr were High Elf Potter retainers who had bonded to Harry at his birth and now that they had had reconnected to him when the masking was removed from his magical signature, nothing could keep them from him, they would be shadowing Harry as he went about his normal life at the Dursleys.

When they left Diagon alley, Harry was using his metamorphmagus ability to change his appearance back to what it had been before and Hermione was wearing a goblin glamour so that she looked like she had before too, Luna didn't bother with that as her father was unlikely to notice. Upon their return to Arabella Figg's house, they removed any memory of their visit and ensured that she would continue reporting the same things about Harry to Dumbledore as she'd been doing. When Minerva escorted Harry back to the Dursleys', she explained that Harry was going to a boarding school in Scotland that had already been paid for so he would be away for over nine months of the year.

She also told Petunia and Vernon that if they did not pay what they owed on the low interest loan they had from Lily ASAP, the family solicitors who were handling her estate would be repossessing their house before the end of the year. When the walrus started blustering and shouting that they couldn't do that, she just gave him an evil smile.

"Oh I can assure you that they can and will Mister Dursley! You see the Potter family solicitors were actually friends of James and Lily's and that money was meant to ensure that their son would be properly looked after in the event that anything ever happened to them. I can tell you I was as angry as they were when I took Harry to their offices to sort out his legal matters and they told us that the payments had been stopped soon after Harry's parents were killed. You are now nearly ten years behind on your payments and the interest has been compounding all this time, so you have quite a bit more to pay than you would have if you'd honoured your commitments. Did you really believe that you could just stop paying because your sister in law and her husband had been killed? If so I shudder to think what you do in your normal business dealings…. Come to think of it, Harry now owns the majority holding Lily had in Gunnings Drills where you work Mister Dursley…. so perhaps his solicitors should also be calling for the company's books to be audited."

"Pay young Harry what you him owe Mister Dursley! From what he has shown us, you have gotten more than enough work out of him ever since he was a tiny tot to cover what little your family has spent on him in the last ten years… and in case you are unaware, there are actually laws against child labour so his solicitors are considering going to the authorities about that as well as the rest of this. Perhaps you will be able to recover some of the money you've been giving to your sister instead of making the payments on what you owe… Your wife and son may have to live with her after you are sent to prison, seeing as you paid her bills with the money you stole from young Harry. You should just think yourselves lucky that your nephew has Lily's good heart and has insisted that you be given a chance to come good on what you owe him before his solicitors come after you, because that is the only thing that is holding them back at the moment… And while you're at it, ask yourselves how Lily would have treated your son if anything had happened to the two of you and she was asked to care for him, I for one am quite certain that she would have loved him like her own."

With that, she called upstairs to tell Harry that she was looking forward to seeing him at the beginning of September and left after he came out of his room (the smallest bedroom of course) to thank her for helping him and say goodbye. As soon as she'd left, Vernon went to huff his way up the stairs (he was probably storming up the stairs in his mind but he had a hard time fighting gravity with all the weight he was carrying) to take this out on the freak, but Petunia snarled at him, taking the strongest stance she'd ever taken with him.

"What do you think you are doing you fool? You heard what she said, do you really think she would have left him here without some way of getting help if anyone tried to attack him? If you shout or raise a hand at him you won't have to worry about his solicitors, you will be dead! You won't need to worry about, you'll be dead, but Dudley and I will lose everything! They'll probably take your sister's cottage as well, because they obviously know that it's been paid for with the money you were supposed to be using to repay the loan from Lily…. Go ahead Vernon, just know that you will be destroying us all with another one of your childish temper tantrums!"

Vernon just stood there, frozen with one foot in the air while he stared at her in shock, because she'd never said anything like that to him in the entire time he'd known her. He still hadn't moved when she stormed back into the living room to angrily turn off the television and tell her son a few home truths, cutting off his whine when she turned off the television.

"Quiet Dudley! What Mummy has to tell you is very important, so pay attention. We are in serious trouble I'm afraid Dudders because your father has been stealing from your cousin Harry for the last ten years, stealing a lot of money! So I need you to be nice to Harry from now on, and tell me if your father or anyone else tries to do anything to him too. We will also have to do without a lot of the things we've had because we have to somehow find the money to pay Harry back what we owe him before the law comes after us….."

At that point Vernon huffed into the room, his tiny mind having reset itself to 'I'm the man of the house and you can't talk to me like that!' mode, but Petunia rounded on him as he entered the living room. "Shut your mouth and listen well Vernon Dursley! I know that you wouldn't have given that sister of your's all of that money you were supposed to be paying off the loan from Lily, so go and get whatever you have left and pay that off the loan straight away, that will hopefully give us some breathing room. Get every shilling you can here and now back from her and pay that off the loan as well…. then tell that cow that she will be paying back everything you've given her, with interest! I will not lose my house because you two decided to live the high life on other people's money! I should have realised that there was no way that selling drills could have earned enough for us to live like that... While I'm at it, your sister will not be setting foot in this house again until she has paid everything back, and even then she will keep her mouth shut and leave that dog of her's at home or else! She has abused my nephew even more than you have and we cannot afford to let anything happen that might cause him to set his solicitors loose on us."

He stood there with his face purpling and his mouth opening and closing like some sort of gigantic humanoid puffer fish until she snapped. "Well? What are you doing, standing there like that? Get moving and start fixing what you've done you fool!"

Petunia knew that her nephew would have heard every word she said, but she wanted him to. Hopefully if he knew she was taking steps to try and rectify what had been done by Vernon he'd hold off on bringing the destruction down on their heads that he was quite capable of and had every right to…. She couldn't believe that that fool had actually been stupid enough to do all of this when he knew that the boy held a majority share of the company he worked for and owned most of their house until they paid it off! He had been right there and signed the paperwork with her when Lily bought her stake in Gunnings off her and then loaned them the rest of the money they needed to buy their house, which was quite a bit because he had to have what he decided was the best house in the estate.

She wished that she could afford to get rid of the fool but there was no way she could scrape up the money to pay off the original loan plus ten years' extra interest by herself, and after they'd treated him the way they had they couldn't expect any more mercy from young Harry. She also wished that she'd had the sense to listen to her little sister instead of screeching at her like a fishwife when she tried to warn her that Vernon Dursley wasn't the catch she saw him as.

Vernon stomped out of the house but she was under no illusion that he'd be going to do what he was told to. He was probably going out to get drunk or go see some whore he had on the side, or more likely whinge to that fat cow of a sister of his. What that Professor had said just before she left had left Petunia thoroughly ashamed of herself because she knew that she was absolutely correct, Lily would never have mistreated Dudley if he was left in her care, she would have loved and nurtured him as if he were her own child. That thought made her look at her own son and admit that she'd been letting her husband ruin him as well, because he was growing up fat, lazy, self centred and overindulged like his father. "Why don't you go to the park and play for a while Dudley? Mummy has to try and work out how to get us out of the trouble your father has gotten us into and a bit of fresh air and exercise will be good for you."

That was when Dudley discovered how much things had changed, because when he whined. "I don't want to! I want to stay here and watch my show! It's all the Freak's fault! Get rid of him so that everything will be alright again!" His Mummy slapped him! Hard!

"Don't ever call your cousin that again! None of this is Harry's fault! We're in this mess because your father is a thief, and a liar and a fool! He was supposed to be paying back the money we borrowed from your Aunt Lily to get this house but he has been keeping it for himself because he thought that no-one would notice. I should have noticed but to my shame I was just happy to let him deal with all the money matters. Well now he's been caught and we have to fix it in a hurry or else your father will be sent to prison and we won't have anywhere to live, and the only reason that we have even been given a chance to fix it is because Harry insisted on it! Our lives have been changed whether you like it or not Dudley and it's all your father's fault! Go and think about that, and the fact that your father would already be on his way to prison by now if Harry hadn't done what he did. Just do as I ask this once please Dudders, Mummy has a lot to think about if we're to find a way out of this mess your father has landed us in."

Dudley stomped out, much as his father had, but Petunia took some hope from the worried and confused expression on his face. She could only pray that he would actually think about what she'd told him. Once he'd left she poured herself a sherry and sat down to think.

As she was thinking, she remembered something from when Harry was left on their doorstep nearly ten years ago and she went up to the master bedroom to retrieve the box that she'd kept hidden away at the back of a shelf in her wardrobe, the box that had been tucked into the blankets he was wrapped in. When she retrieved the box, she went and knocked on Harry's door.

Petunia was surprised when he opened the door a few minutes later, because there was a beautiful white owl sitting on a perch near the window, which brought back memories of owls delivering letters from Lily when she was at school. She waved to the owl. "Does she..." As she somehow knew that the owl was a she. "deliver letters? I remember how your mother used to send letters home from school with owls."

Harry nodded cautiously. "Yes Aunt Petunia, Hedwig is a mail owl..."

She smiled. "She's beautiful."

Harry's nod was more confident this time as he smiled back. "She is, isn't she? Is there something I can do for you Aunt Petunia?"

She shook her head. "I'm sorry Harry, I don't know where my head is at the moment, Professor McGonagall told us some very upsetting things before she left…. Well I expect that you know what she told us from all the shouting after…. I know that you will have a hard time believing this and it doesn't in any way excuse the way that I've treated you, but I swear that I didn't know that Vernon wasn't making the payments on the loan your mother gave us to buy the house here. I should have paid more attention but I just let him handle all the money matters because I thought he was good with money. I don't know how yet but I promise that we will pay back everything we owe you Harry, but what I came about was this..." She held the box out to him and he took it.

"It was tucked into the blankets you were wrapped in when you were left here. I hid it away in the back of my wardrobe because seeing it would have set Vernon off again and I'd forgotten all about it until just now. You see no matter how hard he tried, Vernon couldn't open it or destroy it, but I found that it opened for me, I expect that has something to do with my ties to your mother. The box must be magic because it gets bigger when it's opened and it's bigger on the inside than it is outside, some of the things in there from your parents seem magical as well so I put it away to give to you when you were older, but as I said I'd forgotten all about it until today…. Please don't think that I'm trying to bribe you with this, I know that what we've… what I've done to you is inexcusable, it's just that I only remembered it when I was having a think about the mess we're in."

Harry looked up from the moving pictures he could see in the opened box in his hands with tears in his eyes. "Thank you Aunt Petunia… This… This is very precious to me…. I know that we've got a lot to work out, but I'll try to get them to leave you your house."

Petunia burst into tears and gave him the first hug she'd ever given him at that. "That Professor was right Harry, you do have Lily's good heart and we don't deserve your forgiveness. I'll… I'll try to do better from now on, I promise."

She hugged him again and went downstairs to get out pen and paper and start trying to work out what they could sell to pay Harry what they owed him while Harry popped back into his trunk with Hedwig and started looking through what was in the box, which had images of lilies on the lid so presumably it had been his mother's. Most of what was in the box were magical pictures of their family and trinkets, Myddril (the Druids' name for goblin silver, which was corrupted to Mithril in the version Tolkien was told) 24 hour lady's and gentleman's watches which the engravings said had belonged his parents (though the lady's watch looked just like the one Luna wore) and what must have been his mother's jewellery… That at least proved that his aunt wasn't trying to steal from him because if the jewellery was real, and he knew that the enchanted jewellery at least would be, it would be worth a fortune. She'd been able to open the box as she said because she knew what was in it, but most of the jewellery at least was still there and he was willing to bet that it all was. He found an archaic form of his birth certificate, along with his parents' passports and some other documents and letters. There were also two wands in there, and even if he hadn't recognised them, he could feel when he picked them up that they were his parents'.

He remembered that Uncle Hagrid had picked up his mother's wand and took her necklace and bracelet off and collected other things and put them in a box, presumably so that he'd have some mementos of this parents. The box must have been open because he couldn't see any family resemblance between Uncle Hagrid and Mummy, after all he was well over twice her height and several times her size. He also remembered that Uncle Hagrid had tucked something into his blankets just before they got back onto Uncle Padfoot's flying motorcycle to come here.

Things were prickly around the house for the month before he left to go to school, he still helped Aunt Petunia with the cooking because he enjoyed cooking, but he ate with the family now and Uncle Vernon had learned not to say anything about that…. He actually wet himself the first time Aunt Petunia waved a carving knife in his face and told him to shut his mouth because Harry owned more of this house than he did. Uncle Vernon and Dudley hadn't been at all happy when they were told that they would be doing the rest of Harry's chores from now on, but Aunt Petunia actually seemed to be having fun frightening Uncle Vernon by randomly looking out the window and asking what the police were doing in their street.

Vernon and Dudley also complained when anything that they could make money on was sold off to make loan repayments. Vernon had tried to argue that he couldn't give up his car because he needed it for customer visits, so he was pissed off when he was forced to exchange the keys of his luxury sedan for those of one of the company's work runabouts the next day in the office.

Apparently Dudley had gotten at least some of his mother's brains though, because he gave in to the inevitable and accepted the fact that she was wearing the pants in the family now a lot faster than father did, and he was quite surprised to find that he was actually enjoying some of the changes. At first he'd felt as though he was being starved when the whole family was made to eat the same type and amounts of food that Mummy and Harry ate, but he quickly found that he had a lot more energy with the change of diet and being made to go to the park and play, and he was having more fun because of that. He'd even had a bonding moment with Mummy when he admitted that he didn't really want to go to Smeltings anyway when she told him that they wouldn't be able to send him there with the money troubles they were having, because the stories Daddy told him about being at Smeltings had sounded as stupid as its silly uniform.

It took Petunia calling the police on Marge for Vernon to learn just who was in charge of the family now. Marge had been incensed when Vernon eventually passed on Petunia's message that she wouldn't be getting any more money to pay her bills, and what's more she'd have to pay back everything he'd given her over the last ten years, so she came storming around to make it clear to Petunia and that little trouble maker that everything would be going back to the way it was before they started pandering to the runt and gave him his own bedroom.

She tried to attack Petunia when she went to call the police and Harry had to stop himself doing anything obvious to her with magic because the neighbours were out in the street trying to sticky beak, but then he smiled to himself as a solution came to him and he conjured a ruddy great snake between the Barge and Aunt Petunia. The fat cow fell over and broke her arm when she was trying to scrabble back out the front door to get away from the snake and then had a heart attack when it followed her out of the house so she ended up being carted off in an ambulance.

The snake slid off into the garden and Harry sent it back to where it came from as soon as it was out of sight, but Dudley saw Harry and his father in a new light after that, because he'd kicked his father's shins so hard that he could hardly walk for a week for letting his fat cow of a sister attack his Mummy without making any attempt to stop her, but he had no doubts about who was behind that snake suddenly appearing and going at Aunt Marge to protect his Mummy from her.

Things only got worse for Marge after that, because Petunia came to see her in hospital when she was recovering from the heart attack with Harry's solicitor, the report that was filed about her attack on Petunia in her own house (with witness statements from all the neighbours who had been avidly watching the altercation), and the paperwork to sell her cottage to repay the money she owed Harry. Ted Tonks laughed at her when she tried to threaten that she'd sue them and the brat for blackmail. "What blackmail Miss Dursley? Your sister in law is merely trying to warn you that your attacking her in her own home in front of so many witnesses has put you in a very sticky situation, while I am here on a totally separate matter from her. You see I am here because we have been advised that you have refused to return the money that was supposed to be used to pay off your brother's debts to our client but he fraudulently passed on to you. Our client has charged us with trying to conduct these proceedings with the minimum damage to everyone involved so we have come to you with an offer to arrange for the sale of your property without forcing it to go through the courts so that you would hopefully have enough left to get yourself somewhere to live after you have discharged your debt to our client. After the threats and imprecations I've heard that you have made against our client, the only child of our dearly departed friends however, I must admit that I would prefer that you choose to force us to take you to court, because I can make sure that after all the damages and court costs you're hit with, you won't be left with a pot to piss in. So by all means, please refuse to sign this paperwork and force us to take you to court Miss Dursley, as that would make my day."

Petunia thought that Marge was going to have another heart attack at that, but she shakily took the pen offered and managed to sign all the forms where Ted indicated. She made one request that Ted was quite happy to take on board when he went looking for a dingy ex-council flat for Marge, that the flat would be big enough for her brother as well. By the time Marge got out of hospital, Ted and the goblins had sold the cottage and most of what she owned, and moved the rest into the two bedroom ex-council flat they got for her.

Vernon had been very generous with the money he gave Marge (as it wasn't his money he was giving away), so between the money recovered from the sale of her cottage, Vernon's car and other things, what they garnisheed from Vernon's pension plan and the money the two of them had hidden away, most of the loan Lily had made them had been repaid. This made what Petunia was wishing she could do on the day that Minerva delivered Harry's Hogwarts letter a viable option, so with the goblins' help Ted fast tracked her divorce from Vernon, garnisheeing a good whack of his salary for the remaining loan repayments as well as alimony and child support to Petunia. When Vernon moved in with his sister they arranged for a cheap, practical and reliable little Mini Clubman Estate for Petunia and the boys to get around in, and they found a nice little three bedroom cottage that would be easier to maintain with their reduced finances closer to the school Dudley was going to and quietly sold off the house so that Petunia and Dudley would have some money behind them.

In the mean time, they had made sure that the story they put together to explain how Harry got everything organised for Hogwarts would stand up. Petunia remembering about the mail owls gave them the core idea and they went from there, saying that she had remembered mail owls delivering letters from Lily and asked the owl to wait so she could send a reply, and she'd also remembered how to get to Diagon Alley so she'd taken Harry to get the basics he needed for Hogwarts, changing money at Gringotts to pay for what she bought. It was struggle for Minerva to stop herself from bursting out laughing at Dumbledore trying to cover up the fact that he was absolutely furious that one of the inconsequential puppets in his scheme had apparently managed to derail how he'd planned to have Hagrid introduce the boy to the magical world and make sure he knew that Albus Dumbledore was the great man who was behind everything good in their world, but there was nothing he could do about it without risking exposing far more of his plans so he had to go along with it.

Harry, Hermione, Luna and Sue used the time up until they left for Hogwarts getting in as much training as they could, but as far as anyone outside their little group knew they were just staying in their rooms most of the time reading their text books. They'd learned to use goblin apparation to get in and out of their trunks and the goblin floos inside their trunks let them go straight into the others' trunks, Gringotts or Potter Manor.

By the time Petunia had divorced Vernon and changed her and Dudley's names to Evans, they had also taken Arabella Figg into Gringotts and removed all the bindings and memory manipulations placed on her (including their own, but she understood and accepted why Minerva had needed to do that), as well as giving her the training she needed to protect her mind from Dumbledore and use magic to support herself. Over the next couple of years, Arabella quietly managed to get her OWLs, and even got her NEWTs in Herbology, Potions and Care of Magical Creatures (her best and favourite subjects at Hogwarts up until Dumbledore had bound her magic and intellect enough to make her fail out, because while she wasn't magically strong she'd been a clever little witch). After she had passed her NEWTs, she was able to supplement her income from breeding and selling kneazle crosses by making and selling potions, so she had a rewarding and comfortable life. She had no trouble convincing Dumbledore that things hadn't changed at Number 4 Privet Drive, or maintaining the mental image of that in case he decided to scan her mind passively.

That had also given them the time to treat Harry's Godfather, Sirius Black, for the effects of being around the dementors in Azkaban for nearly ten years and with the resources of the Goblin Nation behind them, they worked out that Peter Pettigrew was hiding in his unregistered animagus form with a wizarding family. Pettigrew was quietly captured and Amelia slipped the item for the two trials into a Wizengamot session while Dumbledore was tied up with his last minute plans to get Harry Potter under control when he started at Hogwarts.

None of the arguments against Duke Black getting the trial that he was never given before he was illegally thrown into Azkaban and forgotten were successful, so they tried Pettigrew and then him, revoking Pettigrew's posthumous Order of Merlin First Class before he had his magic stripped from him and he was thrown through the Veil of Death. The ones trying to say that Black couldn't be innocent because he was a Death Eater who had betrayed the Potters gave them an excuse to question Pettigrew under Veritaserum and expose more than a few Death Eaters in key positions, along with the fact that their claims of having been made to take the Dark Mark under the Imperius curse were false. Some of them were questioned and tried then and there, going through the Veil of Death with Pettigrew, but unfortunately the ones who were behind the current Minister for Magic once again managed to wriggle out of getting their just deserts.

They had managed to achieve their primary aims though, to get Sirius cleared, freed and formally accepted as Duke Black and have him formally recognised as Harry's Magical Guardian to strip away the power Dumbledore had given himself over Harry. Sirius was still the man-child he'd been at Hogwarts and in the Aurors after the war, and James had grudgingly agreed that he didn't really want their son growing up being taught to be nothing but a prankster, so custody of Harry was meant to go to the Lovegoods (Pandora was Harry's Godmother), and if anything prevented them looking after him the Tonks, because Andromeda Tonks was Harry's closest blood relative in the Magical world who hadn't followed the self styled Lord Voldemort. The Tonks were still to have been involved in Harry's upbringing if he was placed with the Lovegoods, because their daughter Nymphadora was the only other known full Metamorphmagus in Magical Britain, so they would be helping him learn to deal with that ability.

The reason that Sirius was made Harry's Godfather was that he was Heir to the Most Noble and Most Ancient Druid House of Black, the only other Most Noble House in Magical Britain, which meant that he would have the power to protect Harry as no-one else could. It had been Sirius' idea to blood adopt Harry and formally make him his Heir, but after he shared his reasoning James and Lily agreed and went along with it.

While largely immature and irresponsible, Sirius was no fool and he understood and, once he was accepted as Head of the House of Black, actioned the requests to reinstate his cousin Andromeda as a favoured daughter of the House of Black, blood adopting Ted into the Black family and naming him the Head of one of the Most Ancient Druid Families that were part of the House of Black. The Baroness title that had been stripped from Andromeda's sister Bellatrix when he called for the formal dissolution of her marriage to Radolphus Lestrange and recalled everything given to them by the House of Black as part of her dowry before casting her out of the House of Black was allocated to Andromeda as part of the dowry that had been previously withheld from her. This made the Tonks Family the Junior Noble and Most Ancient Druid House of Tonks and gave them the power to protect themselves against the politics of Magical Britain. They were holding off having Harry formally put into the custody of the Tonks until they saw how the situation with the Dursleys panned out.

As with when he was made Harry's Godfather, Sirius went a step beyond what he was asked to do for Andromeda and talked her into accepting the role of Steward of the Most Noble and Most Ancient Druid House of Black and its Associated Houses, and with Harry, Hermione and Luna's wholehearted agreement, the roles of Regent for the Most Noble and Most Ancient Druid House of Potter and its Associated Houses, Regent for the Senior Noble and Most Ancient Druid House of Hufflepuff and its Associated Houses and Regent for the Senior Noble and Most Ancient Druid House of Ravenclaw and its Associated Houses. The ones who had been running roughshod over Magical Britain didn't know it yet but Andromeda Tonks had just become the most powerful witch in the country, holding enough voting power to effect every decision made in the Wizengamot and the ability to call in any and all debts to the houses that she now represented, but in some cases she held off on doing that until it would benefit them the most.