Chapter 4: IV. Cold Trail
🙞 12 September 1989 | City of Bath, Somerset 🙜
Harry stared at the bowl on the table, his face a blank canvas. The beans, meat, carrot, and tomatoes made for a filling, healthy meal. Better than he had ever eaten back in the Dursleys, and, yet, his face continued expressionless.
It had been fourteen days - two weeks since Harry started searching for a stable place to call 'home'. The initial plan felt sound to him, but now he thought it was rather silly.
If he was to find a safe, private place he could take as his own, it might as well be never.
Most abandoned buildings that had livable conditions already had squatters. And the rest? Their roof might fall on his head while he slept. Or he could fall through the rotten floor, so decayed by water leakage as it was.
By this point, he already had used more than a dozen different shops and buildings to sleep during the night. He no longer popped in alleyways or streets, having learned his lesson after nearly scaring a cat to death.
Now, he popped from one rooftop to another, away from the prying eyes of passers-by. He called it the 'hop-to-hop' movement, adopting it as his main form of travelling.
During the night, he used his magic to break into places he had scouted earlier in the day. Like that, he lived for two weeks straights, eating well and even 'acquiring' form-fitting winter clothes.
Still, he was annoyed that he had wasted so much time looking for shelter. It even reached a point where he looked for abandoned bunkers from World War II. The results were the same, of course. The government had already leased out most bomb shelters to archiving companies, and the few remaining were unsuitable for living.
'Now, at least I know I don't need a fixed place to stay,' he thought, trying to justify the lost time as educational.
"Come on, Omen. Time to go," he then, with practised ease, sent images of leaving to the bird.
The raven immediately flew to rest on Harry's shoulder, disappearing with a 'pop' seconds after.
🙞 Isabel Louise Mallard | Senior Auror 🙜
A loud snap sounded within the small kitchen, quickly accompanied by many others. Immediately upon arrival, Isabel surveyed her surroundings, taking note of the still heated bowl on the table.
They had been on this trail for two weeks already, but they still had yet to find a pattern in the kid's movement. Never once he had slept in the same place twice, and as they couldn't track the destination of Apparitions, only their source, they were rendered helpless.
Unfortunately, other spells weren't as helpful in their search, as they couldn't distinguish their target from the hundreds of other accidental magic in the country. Their only lead was Apparition, something only their quarry seemed capable of doing while still underaged.
So, all they could do was sit and wait for any signals of Apparition from the Underage Trace Arrays, which weren't always as accurate location-wise as they'd like. Not to mention the few rare areas of Britain that remained out of reach from the Arrays.
Couple that with some CCTV cameras that hadn't glitched out due to magical interference, keeping their footage, and they had a brewing Statute of Secrecy disaster at their hands.
Their contacts in the Muggle Ministry, alongside the Muggle Prime Minister, were also on the chase. After all, while both ministries were independent of one another, neither wanted an incident to happen which could warrant international intervention.
Of the rare CCTV footage they could acquire - and later dispose of, naturally - told them the kid had black hair and was small in height, probably no older than 11. That was further justified by why the Underage Arrays still hadn't identified who it was that they searched.
It wasn't possible to, after all. The boy had yet to go to Hogwarts - his magical 'signature' wasn't registered. Which meant the kid either purposefully didn't go to Hogwarts - something she found hard to believe - or he was younger than 11 years old. The latter she also found just as unbelievable, though.
No kid under 11 should even think to attempt Apparating. Not without the risk of 'splinching', where they lost their limbs, or worse, their life. The rare occurrences of children capable of performing Apparition date back to the Global Wizard War of Grindelwald Gellert, when child soldiers became commonplace.
These were times of peace, however. No young child should be mature enough or focused enough to do so. Kids that age should be playing Exploding Snap and worrying about Quidditch. Not performing Apparition all over Britain.
"Nothing?" She asked her subordinates, even though she already knew the answer.
"No," her head subordinate replied, a grimace on his face, "For his other spells, he didn't use a wand - most likely doesn't have one. The magical signature is too convoluted to say otherwise. If he did, it would be possible to register it to the Arrays. And without that-"
"We can't tell where he could be other than by Apparition, which is useless in that regard." She completed his sentence with another grimace.
"Alright, there is nothing left here for us to do. Let us go," A dozen snaps later, the kitchen became deserted, the bowl now cold on its table.
🙞 Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore | Supreme Mugwump 🙜
If there was one thing that Albus Dumbledore could always complain about, it was his duties.
Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot, Supreme Mugwump of the International Confederation of Wizards, and Headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry - his titles were many, and so were his responsibilities.
He was stretched too thin. Already, he couldn't keep track of the deteriorating relationships between Magical Europe and Magical Asia. Not to mention, his overload of duties became even more pronounced during the past ten years.
During that period, he worked towards the election of Sebastian Delacour, now Minister to the French Ministry of Magic. Together they had pushed for the Werewolf Rights Bill and were on half their way to advocating for expanding Part-Veela rights to Full-Veela.
It took years - and most of his attention - but he knew it to be necessary. As Mugwump of the ICW, it was his job to keep the wizarding communities in peace, and he considered Magical Europe to be a powderkeg - one that threatened the flimsy status quo.
Pushing for a more liberal government in France was crucial in keeping the blood traditionalists under control. Should they have their way, more conflicts spurned by blood ideology would happen, and he couldn't let a second Grindelwald to emerge.
Already, Tom Riddle had been close to being the match to alight the gunpowder that was Europe. Thankfully, he was too prideful to ally with other blood-purist groups outside Britain. In refusing to do so, Tom Riddle had alienated himself.
Ironically, despite Tom Riddle's search for eternal glory, he was but a regional dark wizard. Not many knew much about him outside of Britain.
That, however, required one to assume that Tom Riddle died on the fateful day of 31 October 1981 - an assumption Dumbledore couldn't do. He dreaded that, one day, Tom Riddle would rise again to power, but this time without committing the same mistakes.
So, Dumbledore refused to stop working to diminish the power of blood-purist factions overseas. On the off chance that Tom Riddle was still alive, and that the prophecy was true, he would find no support outside the United Kingdom.
Those were his hopes, at least - it was why he was stretched too thin. Only now did he return from France to Britain, after ten years of politicking, and he could finally oversee Hogwarts personally. For once, he was relaxed and at ease.
The Wizengamot in Britain was now in balance, with families like the Greengrass and Davis keeping blood purists like the Malfoys under control. France now had a liberal agenda, and civil unrest overseas was kept to a minimum.
'Nothing could be better,' he thought as he arrived with Fawkes at his office in Hogwarts.
Immediately upon arrival, however, all happy feelings he had vanished like smoke. His stomach felt like dropping with dread, and the room suddenly turned cold as he refused to believe his eyes.
The portrait of little Harry lay broken to shards at his table, a sign which could only mean one thing - the protective blood ward in Privet Drive was no more. Something had happened.
CREATORS' THOUGHTS 
3raven
3raven I plan to expand more on international topics, as well as the connections that World War II and the Cold War had with the wizarding world.
That won't be the focus, but it will part of the worldbuilding. Any thoughts on my take of Dumbledore's character?
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