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“What do you mean, we can’t visit at all?”
“Exactly that, dear boy,” the Headmaster apologized. “Lily’s sister is understandably wary of anyone magical approaching her home, so close to the War’s end. If she feels safer keeping the location of their residence absolutely confidential, to minimize the risk, I am inclined to accept her wishes.”
Gideon stared at the man, arms hanging at his sides where they’d dropped mid-gesture when Dumbledore cut off his request. The Potters weren’t yet dead a week, and already their baby boy had been spirited off to his muggle relatives, without so much as a single one of his favorite toys along for the ride.
Gid would know. He and Fab had gone through that house top to bottom, nursery included.
So. He made himself take a deep breath, straightened out his shoulders, and inquired about the possibility of exchanging letters with Lily’s sister, to keep tabs on little Harry’s well-being. When that too got shot down, Gideon moved on to Christmas cards, birthday presents, anything that might give the last Potter some continued connection with his birthright until he came to Hogwarts.
Dumbledore refused to budge. Either Lily neglected to tell any of them exactly how paranoid her sister was, or the Headmaster just didn’t want anyone else from the wizarding world to gain access to the newly dubbed ‘Boy-Who-Lived’.
...Gideon really wanted to believe the former, considering Lily never talked much at all about her muggle sister, but something in Dumbledore’s gentle refusals set his teeth on edge.
He wound up leaving not long after, taking the school’s Floo through to the Leaky Cauldron, and from there Apparating back and forth across muggle London half a dozen times before arriving at a particularly cheap block of flats. “I hope you had more luck than I did,” he called out sourly at the door, only to nearly trip over his own feet when Remus Lupin unexpectedly appeared out of the tiny kitchen.
“I’ve always had more luck than you,” Fabian answered, ducking around the taller man to catch Gid’s arm before he could faceplant against a wall. “But come on, we’ve got a kettle going, tell us what happened.”
“Right,” Gideon muttered, slipping his wand back into its holster. Nothing against Remus, of course, but- they had just wrapped up a highly dangerous war, after all, and the instinct to fire spells first and ask questions later would take a while to die back down.
The man smiled wryly, as if he could read Gid’s mind, and trailed after the twins to their marginal little sitting room. There wasn’t much else to the flat, truth be told: a loo with a cramped shower, couple of closets, one bedroom with a pair of old army cots shoved inside. A fancy safehouse it was not, but it did the trick in keeping them alive.
...had done the trick. Merlin. They’d actually be able to move out to a real home pretty soon. Maybe someplace in the country, close to their sister and her kids...
Gideon shook his head, dismissing that thought for the time being. Harry. They needed to focus on Harry.
He gave a full account of his meeting with the Headmaster, during which Fab started looking grim and Remus went carefully blank. Gid shared his suspicion, as well, about Dumbledore trying to keep Harry hidden away from the wizarding world entirely. “It could be Petunia too,” Remus managed to say, once he’d finished. “From what little Lily said, her older sister never did care for magic, or anyone who used it. She didn’t stay long at the wedding, either, not with the rest of us cutting loose for once.”
“All the more reason to let someone know the address so they can keep an eye on things,” Gideon protested.
“Look, the whys and wherefores are irrelevant at the moment,” Fabian cut in. “Bottom line: if we want to check on Harry, we need to be sneaky about it.”
It took almost a month, but the three of them eventually hit upon Number Four Privet Drive. In all that time, Remus continued to stay with the twins, helping out with meals and dishes, catching a few hours sleep at a time on their rather battered settee before nightmares inevitably woke him up.
Besides the search for Lily’s muggle sister, he’d also been working on negotiating his way into a visit to Azkaban.
(“Sirius was my friend,” the man growled one night, when they’d broken out the Firewhiskey. “He was my friend for ten years. He owes me an explanation, and I owe him a good swift punch in the mouth, and if I can’t have one I will damn well get the other.”)
Ironically, the obstacle to one problem became a solution to the other. In a last ditch hope of cutting through some red tape, Remus reached out to Dumbledore, who reluctantly agreed to accompany him to the prison. They set a date for later in the week; not two days after, Gideon found the record of sale of a four-bedroom house in Surrey under the name of Dursley.
“We can wait until you’re back,” Fabian tried to say, only for Remus to shake his head.
“No. Go on, while we know for certain the Headmaster can’t pop up to chase you off. Just- just make sure- that Harry gets this.” He handed over a plush toy, designed to look like a baby deer out of some muggle children’s film or other. It was one of the few salvageable things they’d retrieved from the nursery.
So. Remus left early on the designated morning, to Azkaban with a brief stop at Hogwarts, and the twins gave it half an hour before they got a move on themselves. They Apparated in and out of London a few times, then pulled out a pair of broomsticks to fly the rest of the way under Disillusionment charms.
They still needed to do quite a bit of wandering on foot once they actually reached Little Whinging, of course. Gideon focused on checking street signs; Fabian had fun making faces at the muggles who stared at them while walking or driving past. (It wasn’t as if they hadn’t dressed properly. Button-up shirts and trousers with a hat apiece - so what if the shirts had fun matching patterns, or that Fab wore a bowler while Gid stuck to a top hat? Surely not all muggles were fashion snobs.)
Eventually, they happened upon Privet Drive. And then things took a distinct turn for the worse.
The twins could hear a small child wailing at the top of their lungs even coming up the street, only somewhat muted when the father finished tucking them into a carseat and slamming the door shut. He then straightened up, and called towards the house, “PETUNIA!”
“I’m coming Vernon, don’t shout so!” Gid nearly hurried forward; Fab caught his arm and held back.
The Dursley parents bundled themselves into the motorcar as well, backed out of their drive, and disappeared down the far end of the road. Gideon shook off his brother’s hand with a frown. “What’d you do that for? We’ll have to wait for them to come back now to see Harry!”
Fabian could only shrug, still staring after the departed vehicle. “I don’t know, it doesn’t seem right to visit without Remus. But look, we’ll leave the toy and a note on the front step, and come back with him tomorrow to see the lad. Alright?”
“...fine.”
They made it to the front door. They got as far as crouching down, an arm apiece reaching to deposit the plush toy and a hastily scribbled note.
Then a babe began to cry.
Identical eyes snapped up to stare at one another, horrified. The crying was coming from inside the house.
In the span of mere moments, Gideon cast Alohomora at the door, and Fabian shoved through it, immediately headed for the visible staircase. Except- the cries weren’t up the stairs, they were- they were underneath.
Fabian yanked back the small latch holding the cupboard door shut, and even in the dim light what he found was unmistakable. Harry Potter, all of eighteen months old, sat on a rather sad looking baby blanket on the floor, both it and the thin pad beneath and his little trousers soaked with mess. The boy’s miserable sobs died off the instant he caught sight of Fab; then tiny hands stretched, begging, and he couldn’t do anything other than reach back and scoop the lad up, mess and all. “Oh, Merlin. Merlin, Harry, I’m so sorry.”
“Alone,” Gid said, dumbfounded, only for anger to come roaring into his tone. “They left him alone, like this-!”
“Fix first, rant later,” Fabian reminded him. “Help me find some clean nappies.”
They found a nursery chock full of baby supplies upstairs, with only a single crib in pride of place. Two other bedrooms on the floor besides it and the master, and Gideon had a hard time blinking the rage out of his eyes.
Wary of magical folk, ha! If Lily’s sister didn’t live in fear of someone from their world discovering how she treated her nephew, Gid would eat his top hat. No wonder she’d insisted none of them ever come near her home!
Once they got Harry cleaned up and swaddled in some new clothes, the twins stared at one another for a good long moment. Then Fabian took a deep breath, handed over the much happier baby, and marched out of the room.
Gideon trailed him downstairs, into the kitchen, where a white muggle phoney-tell hung upon the wall. Fab stared it down, face tight with concentration. Harry mumbled something in baby-speak, and Gid idly shushed him, tucking the plush toy in a little closer for the lad to hold onto.
After a minute or so, Fab picked up the device.
“999, what is your emergency?”
“...right. Look. This isn’t an active emergency, but- could you send someone ‘round anyway?”
“What seems to be the trouble, sir?”
“It’s these- these people! They- no, I ought to- beginning. Start at the beginning, Fab. Look, a couple of friends of mine died last month in a- a break in, at their home, but their little boy survived the attack. He’s a year old. And he got- whisked off, to his mum’s sister and her family, here- Little Whinging- and we just wanted to drop by and check on him, drop off a toy that got left behind- But they left! We saw the two of them drive off, with their own baby, but up by the door we could hear Harry crying inside!”
“No one else is in the house?”
“Well, there- there *wasn’t*, but my brother and I- you can call it breaking and entering if you like, but we forced our way in, because- he was crying! And for good reason! Those people left him sitting in his own mess, for HOURS by the size of it, in a cupboard under the stairs! He didn’t get in there by accident, either, we found a pad and his blanket, and it was latched shut!”
“I understand, sir- what’s the exact address-?”
“Number Four, Privet Drive, Little Whining in Surrey.”
“-right, I’ve sent that off to the authorities. Do you want to stay on the line until they arrive?”
“...”
“Sir? Are you there?”
Moll,
Bit of an issue. I know you’ve been pestering me and Fab for ages over when we’re going to settle down, start thinking ahead and all that. Well, we kind of skipped a couple steps, and seem to have acquired a baby. He’s in between your youngest two, age-wise, and while we’ve got a third set of hands to help change nappies and such, it sure would be brill if we could pop over and you give us some hands-on training on the rest of the basics, yeah? Without you fussing about our flat, thanks, we’re already looking for a new place.
-Gid