The Kidnapping

Chapter One

A Suspicious Social Worker

Waking suddenly from a nightmare at 4:30 in the morning had its advantages: Harry was able to write his letter without interruption from the Dursleys. As they did not know that his godfather Sirius was an innocent man, they tended to step a bit more lightly around Harry, including giving him time during regular evening hours to do his homework. They tended to be a bit more diplomatic as well, but Aunt Petunia still put him to work whenever she could during the day. This summer, she was determined to have a prize-winning garden, and Harry was to be largely responsible for putting it together. Harry would be woken at six every morning, an hour before either Dudley or Uncle Vernon were up. He would cook his own breakfast (which at least meant he was not forced to follow Dudley's ongoing diet), wash his own dishes, and be out following the list of instructions Aunt Petunia had prepared for him the day before.

Oddly enough, Harry didn't mind so much as he usually did when forced to work for the Dursleys. It was an entirely new experience, making an effort on something for which he would never get any credit - Aunt Petunia had submitted an entry to a local gardening magazine's contest. After all, Harry was famous in the wizarding world for his seeming triumph over Voldemort at the age of one, even though he hadn't really done anything. Many wizards and witches seemed to idolize him for no particular reason. It's not like some of his most daring Hogwarts exploits were common knowledge, especially since Rita Skeeter had done her best - or was it worst? - to discredit him over the past school year. Regardless, Harry had spent all his life with the Dursleys being hailed as the one who ended Voldemort's reign of terror.

Unfortunately, Harry thought, with a pang of guilt, the wizarding world would soon be in the grip of renewed darkness, now that Voldemort was back.

In any case, it was time to get down to his letter. Harry spent a good hour on it, making sure it was worded just right. He wanted to tell Sirius about his nightmares, and get some advice. Deep down, he knew that he needed a little extra reassurance from an adult he looked up to, something the Dursleys weren't about to hand out any time soon. A part of him felt personally responsible for Cedric's death, even though he knew intellectually that he was blameless. Neither of them had known that the Tournament had been set up, but the guilty feelings persisted. Harry supposed that he needed to have someone he looked up to remind him that it wasn't his fault. After finishing his letter, he folded it and stuffed it into an envelope.

Hedwig was drinking water in her cage. Uncle Vernon had allowed Harry to keep the cage unlocked so Harry could use Hedwig for correspondence (Harry knew that his uncle's status as an escaped convict helped in that regard). Harry had been able to keep in touch with his friends in the wizarding world, and it was one of the things that kept him from going crazy at the Dursleys, as he remembered from thinking back to his very lonely summer between first and second year at Hogwarts.

"Hedwig," Harry whispered. Hedwig looked up with an affectionate hoot. He rummaged through a bag of owl treats sitting beside the cage (but out of Hedwig's reach, of course) and brought one out.

"I've got a letter I need you to deliver to Sirius," Harry continued, tying the letter to her leg. He gave Hedwig the owl treat, and after she finished it, she gave his finger a friendly nip before settling onto his arm as he went up to the window and opened it. Hedwig stepped forward and leapt out, her wings holding her aloft, and soon she was gone.

It was five-thirty in the morning, now, and in half an hour, Aunt Petunia would be by to wake him. Harry decided to head her off at the pass and get himself going. He could save himself a few derogatory remarks.

After dressing hurriedly into some threadbare jeans and a t-shirt, Harry went down to eat, leaving a note on his door so Aunt Petunia would know he was downstairs already fixing his breakfast. This summer, his aunt and uncle had finally started buying him his own clothes, which had surprised Harry until he thought of the practical considerations involved with hand-me-downs: Dudley's old clothes were several sizes much too large for Harry, and in the end it was much easier to get Harry clothes instead of resize Dudley's. Granted, Dudley looked thinner now than he had in ages: he had lost a good deal of weight on the diet that the Smeltings nurse was putting him through, but he was still excessively large, and over the school year Harry had outgrown the hand-me-downs that were small enough to fit him.

The Dursleys being the Dursleys, though, they had arranged to get Harry clothes from the local thrift store - as cheap and as hideous as could be. Harry wasn't too pleased with the results, and he had resolved to get some new clothes - and half-decent ones, at least - once he was in London to get his school supplies.

Harry paused for a minute before turning the oven on. How was he going to arrange going to Diagon Alley this year? Dumbledore was insisting upon his staying with his relatives, as a disgruntled letter from Ron told him but two days ago. How was he supposed to get all stocked up for the coming school year if he was being more or less forced to live in hiding?

Aunt Petunia came down the stairs and looked in on Harry as he finished preparing his breakfast.

"Here's your list of chores, boy," she snapped, and put down a sheet of paper on the table. "Make sure to keep yourself out of trouble." With that, she was off, returning to bed for a quick nap.

Harry settled into the routine established since the summer break had started: wolfing breakfast down, cleaning up after himself, and heading outside to work on the garden, the lawn, and the house. He took out the list and one of a few bottles of water he put into the freezer every night.

Ten o'clock rolled around. Dudley was off at some exercise program he'd been forced into by his parents, and Uncle Vernon was out at work. Aunt Petunia was inside, gossiping away with neighbours on the phone. Harry had spent just over three hours working already, and his second water bottle was nearly empty. He was busy mowing the front lawn when he noticed a rather plain black family sedan slowly making its way down Privet Drive, as if the person driving it was carefully looking at the numbers. The car stopped briefly in front of Number Four, and then manoeuvred into their laneway.

Harry wondered who it could be. Aunt Petunia would have made sure he was well out of the way if she'd been expecting company. The driver side door opened, and out stepped a woman who had, at first glance, government official written all over her.

She had a plain grey jacket and knee-length skirt on, a creamy white shirt and a featureless grey tie. Her eyes were covered with sunglasses, and her shiny black hair was tied up in a tight ponytail.

Nice legs, Harry thought to himself, and then turned back to the lawnmower, a slight flush spreading up his neck. He turned the mower off, and turned back to look at the woman, who was dividing her attention between examining the house and waiting for him.

"This is the Dursley residence, is it not?" she asked in a polite voice. Harry noticed that she spoke with an unfamiliar accent. Probably an American from the sound of it.

"Er, yes," replied Harry.

"Excellent. Are either Mr or Mrs Dursley at home?"

Harry decided that if she really was from the government, it would be a bad idea to tell her that none of his relatives were home.

"Mrs Dursley is home."

"Good," the woman said. She returned to the car and fetched a briefcase and a clipboard. She looked down at the clipboard before removing her sunglasses and looking up at Harry again. He noticed that her eyes were a piercing blue, and it seemed that her gaze reached deep into his soul. He suppressed a shudder. There was something not quite right with the whole situation.

"You are Mr Harry Potter?"

For a brief moment, Harry wondered how she could know he was here. But he quickly found his voice again and replied. "Yes."

She nodded, as if to herself. "Would you be so good as to come with me? I'm from the government, and would just like to ask you and your adoptive parents some questions."

Harry was fairly certain he'd managed to conceal the shock he felt, as the woman's expression did not change. How did she know the Dursleys had taken him in? As far back as he could remember they'd tried to keep his very existence a secret from as many people as they could.

Earth to Harry, they're a Muggle family, they'd need to report something like this to the government, he reminded himself a moment later. Just because his mother, a Muggle-born witch, had entered into the wizarding world didn't mean her family had. And when they'd been required to adopt Harry, he imagined they would have gone through the usual legal process. Or had they? Maybe, Harry thought, with just a hint of trepidation, that some bureaucrat had stumbled upon his existence, and now they were going to grill the Dursleys about him.

And then they'd probably take you away, and until last June, you wouldn't have minded. But things had changed. He knew that Dumbledore wanted him here because here he could not be touched by Voldemort. Truth be told, Harry didn't think he'd be any more vulnerable than if he was out in the Muggle world.

Still, he dutifully followed the woman to the front door, standing a few paces behind her with a carefully crafted neutral expression on his face. She rang the doorbell. Twenty seconds passed before Aunt Petunia came to answer.

"Y-yes?" she asked, her eyes flickering between Harry, the woman's face, and the briefcase, which had a Department of Health logo stamped on it.

"Mrs Petunia Dursley?" the woman asked. Aunt Petunia nodded, assuming a guarded expression.

"My name is Catherine Scott, from the Department of Health. I'm here to ask you a few questions about your nephew here."

"I see..." Aunt Petunia trailed off, licking her lips. Harry was certain she would have shot him a look of pure venom had this Catherine Scott not been there.

"Would you like to come in, er-" Aunt Petunia started, but paused, not entirely sure how Catherine Scott wanted to be addressed.

"Ms Scott," was the smooth reply, "and, yes, thank you, I would very much enjoy it." Her voice was cultured and polite, Harry thought, even if it had a strange accent to it.

They stepped into the house, Harry careful to remove his shoes on the front mat, and went into the living room, where he sat down on the rocking chair.

"No need to feel any apprehension, Mrs Dursley," Scott said kindly. "I'm here mainly to ask how you apparently did such a good job raising your nephew. I've known many teenagers who have lost their parents at young ages, and they aren't usually very industrious."

Harry was now more alert than ever to something going on. He'd seen enough in the Muggle papers to know that even if his uncle's rants about government bureaucrats were ninety percent lies, when a social worker came to call to ask about an adopted child, it certainly wasn't to compliment the foster parents or look like they were about to ask them for tips. Sparing a glance at his Aunt, he saw that she was almost equally doubtful.

Scott picked up on this, for she smirked, a self-deprecating half-smile. "We're not all faceless bureaucrats just waiting for people to make a mess of things so we can step in and muddy up the waters more, you know," she said softly, with a hint of bitterness so subtle that Harry was almost certain it wasn't there. "Some of us," and at this point her voice held no doubt that she counted herself among those some, "believe that we can do our job better by not interfering in a family's affairs. If I thought I was investigating an abusive situation, I'd have brought some police with me."

"How reassuring," Aunt Petunia said, keeping all irony out of her voice in what Harry thought was a miracle of emotional control. He managed to keep himself from snorting in derision. As if ten years in a cupboard under the stairs wasn't an abusive situation?

"We are, of course, aware of your son's current weight loss regime, since the medical staff at Smeltings were somewhat concerned about his stature," Ms Scott went on, "and I felt it was interesting that you'd managed to raise a son who the Smeltings staff describe, er, diplomatically, as spoiled -" and there was no mistaking Aunt Petunia's flinch there - "whereas your nephew is by the accounts of your neighbours quiet and polite, and according to his frequent caretaker Mrs Figg is such a nice young boy."

Petunia smiled nervously. "Well, we, ahh," she tried to get out, but Catherine smiled again.

"Of course, I'm not here to ask you questions about your son. Parents tend to look at their own children with rose-tinted glasses, and it's not my place to get involved." Catherine turned to Harry. "I believe you have some work to be getting on with?" she asked.

Taking that as his cue, Harry stood up. His feeling of suspicion wasn't going away. Catherine Scott wasn't just here to play nice. Was she trying to bait a confession of some sort out of Aunt Petunia? And as he was getting up, he noticed her gaze was almost imperceptibly taking everything in. She was examining the inside of the house quite thoroughly.

Harry spent the rest of the hour or so that Catherine Scott was there wondering what she was talking to Aunt Petunia about, and after she left he spent more time wondering the same thing (Aunt Petunia having snapped at him to mind his own business when he asked her about it during lunch). By the time he finished his chores, it was two in the afternoon, and Dudley had come home, eaten his own lunch, and headed to his room to play video games and watch television. Harry was still trying to figure out why Ms Scott had bothered coming, and why she made him suspicious. Come to think of it, why had she asked him to come in with her, and then summarily dismissed him from the conversation as soon as it had got started in earnest? If he had bothered to think of it as he sat down to work on some of the homework Snape had assigned for the summer, he would have been grateful for the mystery her visit had presented: it had kept his mind off of Cedric, Cho, his friends, and Voldemort, along with all the other emotional baggage the last year had heaped upon him. Fortunately, his mind did not turn to those subjects, and so Harry Potter spent perhaps his first full day at Number Four Privet Drive not indulging in guilt, self-pity, and remorse.

= = = = =

Catherine Scott had spent the afternoon after visiting Number Four, Privet Drive, waiting. At first, she waited in a restaurant, where she spent a good hour sitting, eating slowly, and reading over the "notes" she had taken during her meeting with Petunia Dursley. Those notes were really a diagram of the layout of the rooms at the Dursley's, obtained thanks to her careful observation of the first floor during their conversation, and equally careful observation of the second floor while ostensibly going to the bathroom.

The notes also contained a list of the magical wards surrounding the place, for Catherine Scott was a witch, and a well-trained one at that. The protections surrounding Number Four were formidable, and if she hadn't been invited in, she would never have gained entry into the house. Only Mundanes (her foster father's word for non-magical folk) were immune to most of the enchantments, though some, like those designed to prevent the illicit entry of anyone who wanted to do harm to the house's occupants, worked against them as well. If Privet Drive suffered a spate of burglaries, the Dursleys would unwittingly be safe.

Catherine Scott could never break and enter into the Dursley home, but she imagined her foster father could, and likely as not so could his most trusted servants, the wraiths.

Catherine tried not to think much of the wraiths: even though she had known them almost all of her life with her foster father, she had never developed any tolerance for the auras of fear that surrounded them. And she could barely stand to be around more than one of them at a time.

Catherine Scott had been born in a trailer park in Kansas to a mother who hadn't wanted her, and whose use of certain substances had left Catherine orphaned as an infant. She had never known her biological father, and was certain she would never want to. She only knew what she did about her roots because Connor Salisbury, who had adopted her, had told her the whole story as far as he knew it. Salisbury had adopted her almost immediately upon determining that she had the potential to be a witch.

She checked her watch. Father and the wraiths he's bringing with him will be here in an hour. I should head to the airport to meet them. Salisbury was a wealthy recluse, known as a bit of a hermit among the Mundane world, and almost as secluded from the magical world as well, even though he was a wizard...

Catherine frowned at that. No, he's not quite a wizard, at least not in the same way that I'm a witch. He can do magic, but it's not the same way anyone else does it, and he can put up with being around the wraiths. That's got to make him very different.

She had gone to England to scout out the situation before his arrival with several wraiths. They wanted to capture powerful wizard who could be used as a physical channel for a ritual of some power that Salisbury was seeking to undertake. And as things stood, two of the most powerful wizards in the world were in England: Albus Dumbledore and Lord Voldemort.

Of course, neither would agree to willingly undergo such a process, so the only option was to coerce one or the other into it. And that was why Catherine had looked into the defences surrounding Harry Potter: he was the perfect bait for both men. Dumbledore wanted Harry alive, Voldemort wanted him dead. The problem was getting the boy without having either or both wizards interfering with the kidnap.

Catherine pondered over the problem as she drove to the small Surrey airport. Her father owned a Gulfstream IV jet, which he used to fly around on his various errands. It also made it easier to transport the wraiths around, as their terror-inducing emanations made it extremely difficult to have them out in public. She had enchanted the car to block out the wraiths' aura of fear whenever they were in it. The car had also been carefully enchanted so that it could fit any number of people within, while still looking like a typical Mundane automobile from the outside. Catherine had been here for almost six months, partly making adjustments on the car and learning to drive properly on English roads: she had at first found driving on the left side of the road quite disconcerting.

Of course, she had also been quite productive gleaning information about Harry Potter during those six months, information that could come in useful when they went about putting him into their custody.

It wasn't long before she had reached the country airport where her foster father's jet was coming in to land as she pulled into the car park. Half an hour later, she, Salisbury, and five wraiths, dressed like motorcyclists, helmets and all, were in her car, heading towards London. The wraiths had their visors down, which Catherine knew was to prevent bystanders from seeing that there was, well, nothing to see if they hadn't taken that precaution.

"Father, it's not the protective wards that worry me," she was saying. "It's the ones that set off alarms from here to the Hebrides. If the boy is forcibly taken from his relatives, a lot of people are going to know about it."

Salisbury glanced at her, his expression one of amusement. "Do you think they will matter? Will anyone be able to intervene fast enough to stop us?"

"I don't think so, Father, and even if they can arrive in time to catch us in the act, I'm sure the wraiths can keep them from interfering."

She smiled a forced smile; the wraiths were making her stomach turn just right now. "We'll definitely have to disable the old Squib - I know you don't like that term - before we make a move on Harry, and we'll need to keep the local Mundane neighbours from getting involved. While I think his relatives wouldn't really mind his leaving for a while, I think they're putting him to work right at the moment, so they would at least miss his ability to carry out manual labour.

"We'll want him to come quietly, so that means getting hold of someone else and using them to secure Harry's co-operation."

"And whom would we make use of?" Salisbury asked.

"I've already thought about that quite a bit, and I think there's only one person who'll do. Ronald Weasley, his best friend, would do well, but as a close friend of Potter, his family home has had several extra protective spells cast upon it recently, and as he belongs to a big, magically talented family, it'd take too long to get our hands on him to make it worthwhile. Hermione Granger comes from a Mundane family, so she would be a perfect candidate, but they are away on vacation in Bulgaria, and I didn't want to spend time tracking them down.

"This leaves Cho Chang, who is one year Mr Potter's senior and is an only child. He is apparently infatuated with her, although she was going out with Cedric Diggory, the boy who was killed by Voldemort on the night of June twenty-fourth, which may complicate his feelings for her. But I'm fairly certain he would be willing to exchange places with her - I suspect he may be feeling partly responsible for Diggory's murder, given the circumstances surrounding it. Anyone else would do, but she'd be the easiest to capture."

Connor Salisbury nodded, stroking his short salt-and-pepper beard, thinking. He looked every inch a healthy old Mundane man, and not a wizard whose powers were indefinably different than those of his own adopted daughter and the wizards and witches she knew. Still, he could be quite dangerous even without magic: he had a very quick mind, excellent perceptive faculties, and a great deal of natural charisma.

"Well thought out," he said at last. "Do you know where this Chang girl lives and what protections surround her?"

Catherine managed a genuine smile. "Of course I do, Father. Did you think I spent all this time here learning how to drive on the wrong side of the road?"