Thank you to all the people reading my story. I know i am slow to update. I actually have already numerous chapters finished but am not sure if they are readable yet.
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Albus Dumbledore POV:
The cry of an owl ripped him out of his sleep.
Slowly he raised his head from the desk, for a second looking confused where he was.
A sight escaped him.
He had fallen at sleep at his desk again and pushed a vial of ink down, which ruined the letter he had been working on.
"Perhaps it was better so." He thought while trying to decipher out what he had written.
When he was so tired that he had fallen asleep at his desk, he didn't want to know what he would have almost send to …madam Bokowski?
Why had he wanted to write to the polish expert in slavish runes?
He seriously should stop working late into the night, at a certain point his head just wasn't in the game anymore.
His gaze wandered to three large piles of documents, levitating besides each other's before his desk.
For a second, he contemplated his chances of getting away with just burning them and claiming that the diabolical mixture of requests and applications had never reached him.
"No… some of them might actually be important."
Another owl cry remembered him of what had ripped him out of his dreams.
"Yes yes, please give it to me." A small grey owl flees down from its seat on one of his predeccors portraits and let an envelope fall on his desk.
He cursed when he recognized the seal on it.
Another request from Fudge? Why? What needed that man his guidance now?
Many people thought it spoke for his intellect and wisdom that the current minister of magic asked often for his opinion.
He thought it spoke more of the reasons why Fudge had been voted into his position in the first place.
With a quick slash from his letter opener, he freed the envelops content and let his eyes dance over Cornelius most recent idea.
"Dear professor Dumbledore,
I hope to find you in good health, personally I have…"
He skipped through a pile of formal pleasantries and painfully chit-chat. Another person's letter he would have read more carefully, but then again, another person wouldn't send him up to ten letters a day.
"…Lucius is the opinion that the business which have supported our society for generations deserve our support and has suggested a support-program…"
By Merlin, seriously?
Couldn't Cornelius see the plaint unfairness in this suggestion? It would be different if that proposal would support essential businesses like wandmakers or apothecaries. But this would lead at best to the support of monopoles.
The desire to tell Cornelius to follow his own mind for once instead of asking him what to do was mercilessly crushed by the renewed realization that without his intervention that man would immediately cave in to Lucius Malfoy.
Quickly he formulated a fitting answer, gave it to the still waiting owl and sighted again while the grew bird flew out of the open window.
This shouldn't be his job. He had denied the offer of becoming minister for a reason.
At the corner of his eye the floating piles of paper wobbled under their own weight.
Merlin, he had enough positions of power that by all right no one should have given to him.
Besides him being not the right man for any position of power, this was simple too much work for a single human being.
Leaning back, he closed his eyes for a second.
How long had it been since he a proper night rest or had at least a pleasant dream?
His mind drifted back to his most recent dream. Or nightmare.
A little girl with white blond hair laying with her dead parents and brother. Their dull eyes staring at him accusingly.
Telling him that it was his fault, asking him why he didn't do better.
He shacked his head.
The Potter and Longbottom tragedies had been the last atrocities of the war six years ago. They had been one of many, perhaps not even the worst ones.
Yet they haunted him to this day.
They had been his comrades- no worse: they had been his subordinates in the fight against Voldemort. He had been responsible for them.
And he had failed them, making them join the long serious of people he had done so in the past.
When all of wizarding Britain had celebrated Voldemort's demise, he had tried to make it up to their surviving families.
Well, that and putting a war-torn country together again.
The young Mr Longbottom had been easy in that regard.
He had still a big family remaining and his grandmother had immediately stood up to become his new guardian. Effectively was all that he had done was trying to bring the foremost experts in the healing of mental damage to St. Mungo's as the Longbottom matriarch denied any attempt of his to pay for her sons and daughter in laws treatment.
The Potters had been another thing all together.
To start with they and their one-year-old son Harry had died. The only survivor being their recently adopted daughter Rose.
And there the trouble started. Because Roses parentage was highly contested.
At first when the Potters had announced the adoption of the infant, they had found had barely turned heads. An assumedly halfblood or even (though unlikely) muggleborn witch getting adopted by two young parents though heart-warming was hardly of interest with a civil war going on.
But then Rose Potter caused the demise of Lord Voldemort.
And as the only surviving family member in that crater of rubble that had once been the Potters house next to the broken corpse of said dark lord, there wasn't much question for the general public who had been responsible for this miracle.
While most wizards and witches had celebrated this event, others had started to ask questions.
Who was that girl to cause the fall of the dark lord? Certainly, she couldn't be muggleborn!
Soon some pureblood families started to make claims for the girl.
Including many "former" death eaters. Alone the attempt of the Malfoys with the apparent similarities in appearance between them and the young saviour had been such a big thorn in his side that he had actually tried to find the girls birthmother.
Frankly he hopped that Rose would never learn more about this woman.
Of course, he hadn't imagined much of someone who let her baby at the door of some completely unknown strangers.
But his investigation led to a young witch that had entered England through unknown ways, lived for six months in a three-bedroom house in London without any job or occupation. At first, he had believed her to be a muggle, before he learnt that she was repeatedly visited by a wizard who provided her with numerous pregnancies supporting potions from the diagonal alley.
Furthers leads led to an expensive fitness studio, a fencing school she left two days after joining, a penthouse apartment in some high security building in some expensive apartment complex which she moved in the last three months of her pregnancy.
Finally, the lead ended with Mrs Eren appearing at the local hospital, giving birth to her daughter, just to disappear one particular cold august night, before her newborn had its proper check-up.
All of this didn't paint a pretty picture: A young woman with lot of resources and support apparently decided to get rid of her child.
He didn't try to judge back then.
He didn't know details about the young woman's life which could have explained her sporadic behaviour, though she could at least give the child up to adoption before leaving her behind.
And by withholding details about her getting potions from some wizard it was easy for him to claim that Mrs Eren was despite her White-blond hair very much a muggle, silencing most claims.
Then four months ago, she had returned.
Straight up showed up at the Dursleys house and convinced the child to come with her.
Another sight escaped him.
The Dursleys had been another mistake of his. And one that he couldn't easily fix.
With one wizarding family after another trying to lay claim on the child or trying to contest her right to the not insignificant Potter fortune, sending her to the Lily's sister had appeared as the only reasonable choice.
Not to mention that he wasn't convinced of Voldemort's demise yet.
If a magical explosion would have been enough to take Tom down, he himself would have succeeded years ago at it.
Yet he had seen his former student returning unscared from being burned alive, bisected or being almost completely crushed by the statue of a particular big troll. Sure, he needed time to heal his body, sometimes disappearing for months after one of their duels. But no matter what happened and what should have killed him, he continued to live on.
In other words, it was reasonable to assume that Voldemort was still alive and would at some point come after the girl who had caused to his fall.
Protection was needed, both against the dark lord and the numerous pureblood families that tried for one reason or the other to get their hands on her.
Fortunately, while James Potter had left his daughter a massive inheritance, his wife Lily had left the child with something far more precious: Some unknown yet unbelievable potent protection spell that still lingered after the Potters death.
No matter what he tried, he couldn't surely identify the spell. All he had to go by were vague rumours and stories of people surviving deadly confrontation after the self-sacrifice of a loved one. Frankly he doubted that it was even an intentional spell. But since it still stayed active after the death of both Potters it had to be tied to their blood. James family was all dead, this left only Lily as the caster with having a still living sister.
Now him trying to reinforce and keep the protection from fading had been an uncertain thing from the start. Rose and Petunia weren't related by blood, making the whole attempt of keeping the protection magic tied to the blood of its caster incredible difficult.
When he was honest to himself, if someone would have told him that they tried to create a sympathetic spell between the vague mental idea of "having a home" and someone's else's bloodline, just by making sure that both people were living together, he would have introduced them to "Oaths, pacts and bonds- an introduction in sympathetic magic for the mentally challenged".
It had been a bloody mess to create that ward.
Sure, was worth it though.
He was certain that no one with bad intentions could get anywhere near the Dursleys home.
Of course, the thing had a catch.
The connection between Rose and Petunia was razor thin and purely artificial. An almost defunct connection between both their minds, just to create some kind of connection between them. Should the girl at any point reject any familiar connection to her aunt-for example by stop considering the Dursleys home as her own- this legimetical spell could easily break.
He closed his eyes and massaged his forehead.
And breaking it did.
Mrs Eren had returned after six years, when her daughter not only had become famous but also a rich heiress. He hated to think the worst of people, but he doubted that it was coincidence that she appeared just some months after he had famously stopped Lucius attempt of gaining custody by revealing that Mrs Eren was most likely a muggle and as such his supposed niece of third degree a muggleborn.
The wards basically broke the second they had left the property and they had started a wild hunt after her all over the country.
He started to sort the documents on his desk while giving an angry snarl from him.
It wasn't completely Mrs Eren's fault.
As irresponsible and selfish her actions had appeared, the true fault laid with him.
How came it that even after having fought of custody battles, reporters, researchers and death eaters, he hadn't even once checked in on the girl?
Sure, he had an observer in the neighbourhood that kept him up to speed about any suspicious people in the area, but would it had been too much work to visit even once?
The result had been that the Rose must had immediately clutched on the first person that had shown her so much as a pretence of love.
The wards were gone now and without any bloodties to the caster, the protection had been fading fastly. So much for the protection wards.
And just to make it worst, by apparating numerous times through muggle villages and towns, Miss Eren had very publicly shown that she was anything but a muggle.
Unsurprisingly, Lucius had restarted his efforts at "getting his niece of third degree back home". And to his surprise, the Malfoy patriarch was surprisingly successful of getting people in the wizard gammot to contemplate his arguments after having publicly dismissed his claims.
Finding Malfoys recent letter, in which the man demanded from him to stop keeping his niece separated from her family, he frowned about the audacity of it.
Currently his argument against Malfoy was that not only was Rose with her adopted mother's sister but that she also had lived with her aunt for her entire life. To separate them on only dubiously proven bloodties would just be cruel.
This should give him time to refute Lucius supposed proofs.
There just had been one single problem… He desired to get Rose away from the Dursleys himself.
Yes, despite everything he had to thank Miss Eren for revealing the disastrous living circumstances of Rose. The girl had neither the height nor mass of the six-year-old she was supposed to be.
His temporary solution had been discussing -speak threatening- the topic of child abuse with them. But he was under no illusion that this was in any way enough.
Perhaps if she would visit Hogwarts and found any friends, he could convince their parents to take Rose in over the summer? Effectively removing her from the less then healthy environment with the Dursleys while easily continuing to rebuff Lucius Malfoy.
Until then, and with that thought his eyes wandered over to a small table with a myriad of silvery instruments, he would have kept his eyes on her. Making sure that she remained physically unharmed and no other wizard or witch came anywhere near the Dursley house. He also regularly checked Rose Potters entry in the book of application to make sure that she wasn't living in a cupboard again.
Standing up he moved to said table and inspected the spinning and steaming instruments.
Just terrible… it had begun with the instruments suddenly measuring the usage of magic near young Miss Potter. The frequency with that it happened was surprising but all hinted at her having started to experiment with her own powers. Not unusual for a young child, especially when it was confronted with it for the first time.
Then the new wards he had put up, registered a Rose with a backpack running away from her aunt's house. Time and speed of this event was concerning and he send Lupin, a few nearby living wizards and his old friend Moody to investigate.
The girl had run away from home to find her mother.
Well, this was just fantastic.
Also, fantastic: Rose had found some useable way to perform wandless magic.
Suppressing an uncomfortable memory, he frowned.
Wandless magic was completely different from wand-based magic.
It demanded self-control, discipline and a certain degree of knowledge not taught or learnt unless one dedicated themselves to actually understand and study the mechanics of magic.
To see something like that even in a simple application with a six-year-old was… frankly beyond astonishing. He could count the first years that had been able to do anything like that at his left hand and have most fingers to spare.
Anyway, Moody had -again- cursed young Miss Potter (he really needed to talk with him about it) and intended to bring her back to the Dursleys.
Dumbledore himself had already been there, helping Mr Dursley to get free from the piece of wall laying on him and taken grimly note of the new low the Dursleys had reached.
It was clear that despite what he had planned he couldn't keep the girl with her family any longer. His delusion to believe in the best of these people had just led a new escalation.
He was still mind storming possible ways how to go on from here, when the others arrived. Or not arrived.
Because despite trying to apparate side by side with the others, Dedalus Diggle and Rose Potter never arrived at Private Drive number 4.
At first, he tried to find them with the modified blood compass he had created after Miss Eren's attempt to kidnap Rose, to, if necessary, pin point the girl's location.
The giant constructs out of glass and silver throned in the middle of the collection of instruments now, the many dials and arrows spinning and whirling like crazy.
Yeah, it was not to supposed to do that. Even a modified version like this that functioned specifically with one person and without a required relative, should have given specific results.
The book of application wasn't much useful either.
While it hadn't crossed Rose Potters name out of its list, indicating that she was at least still alive, it lacked now any address.
"Ah yes! That was it!" With quick steps, belying his age, he returned to his desk and started to rewrite a letter to madam Bokowski.
When he had checked the book of application there had been a number of curious symbols near Rose Potters name.
Since all his other attempts at investigation had failed and the public had at this point learnt about the disappearing of their famous saviour, he was ready investigating every anomaly around the girl.
Now then…