Hedwig flew to North Scotland, where Hogwarts was located. There was a big difference between Hogwarts in the summer and Hogwarts in the winter. In the summer, there were no children wandered leisurely throughout the grounds, talking and laughing as they did. No professors kept watch to ascertain the safety of the school. The grounds were absolutely still and silent, Hedwig’s shadow the only thing moving upon the shaded green grass.

Even to the owl, used as she was to the dark, the looming silence of Hogwarts castle seemed ominous. She wondered I she was perhaps mistaken in coming here for help for her human. Sure, it was where she had found safety and security whilst injured, but who was to say that it would be the same for her human? Even she knew that it would not be wise to bring him to the giant man, whose judgment was lacking even if his heart was in the right place, and the other resident at Hogwarts made her uncertain. His aura was hard to read. She thought that it was a light aura, but there were shadows clouding it that made her feathers stand on end.

There was no time to find a more suitable savior for her human. The boy who’d sent her had told her to find a teacher, and this was the nearest one. All the others were not residing at the school this time of year, and now that she was here, they were all at least another day’s flight away. She’d have to trust that the clouded man would have enough light in him to help Harry.

Severus couldn’t believe that Dumbledore would have the audacity to send an owl at this time of night. His one condition when he had spied for the man was that when it was all over, he would be allowed to be on a typical seven to eleven schedule. No longer would he allow “masters” to interfere with his sleep schedule. He was done with that.

He had thought Dumbledore understood this, but from the sound of the owl tapping outside his door, he had been mistaken. Severus couldn’t even think that it was an emergency, for if it were Dumbledore would have sent a patronus. No, this was just the old man testing his boundaries, and damned if Severus was going to let him do so. They had a deal.

Severus cast a silencing spell on the door to his rooms and rolled back over, his eyes closing instantly. No doubt the owl would be perturbed, but it would stick around nonetheless. Severus could read whatever Dumbledore had sent for him in the morning like a normal person. The thought had him drifting into a deep, even slumber.

Dudley had thought that everything would be better if he sent that letter to Harry’s fellow freaks, but he had clearly been mistaken. As the first pink blush tinged the Eastern sky, he wondered why there’d been no response, nor even the slightest sign that the freaks had gotten his message. Perhaps he had been wrong about how owl mail worked. Maybe the owl wasn’t as smart as he’d allowed, and had gotten confused with the letter. It was, after all, just a bird. How could it be expected to know what Dudley had said to it?

Dudley groaned and buried his face in his arms, stunned at his own stupidity. Here his cousin was suffering at the hands of his parents and he’d placed Harry's fate on a ruddy bird. Soon his father would be in to awaken Harry for his morning duties, but Dudley was sure that his cousin would no longer be capable of even the simplest of tasks. Harry was barely hanging on as it was, and if he got another beating it was sure to be the proverbial straw that broke the camels back.

Dudley could call the police, of course, but he doubted even they would get here before his father had a chance to do serious harm. He was afraid to leave Harry alone, even for a second, sure that if he did he would never see his cousin again. Even now Harry's pale, unconscious form shuddered with every shallow breath he took. Dudley couldn’t think that Harry had much time left.

When the sun had fully risen in the East, thundering footsteps felt like an earthquake rattling through the floorboards. Dudley took in a deep, shaking breath and moved to stand in front of his cousin. His father would not harm Harry, not while Dudley was around to stop it. How exactly he would stop it, he was still uncertain, but somehow he would manage it.

The door creaked slowly open, allowing a small, diamond shaped patch of light to seep in from the hall outside, the shadows around it appearing gaunt and unnatural. A moment later Vernon Dursley stepped into the room, one hand tightening the gray tie around his neck, the other smoothing his thick brown mustache. It took a moment for him to notice his son in the room, and even when he did he only gave a slightly puzzled frown.

“Did you get hungry early, Dudders?”

“No.”

Vernon frowned again, still fumbling with his tie. Dudley found that his nerves were pulled taut as guitar strings, ready to snap. He knew that once his father found out why he was here, the man would be livid. It was like watching a hurricane coming for him and having no place to hide.

Vernon finally finished with his tie and gave his son his full attention. “Did you want something, Dudley?”

“No.”

“Well, then,” the man said slowly, his blue eyes narrowing a bit. “Why are you in here?”

Dudley closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and opened them again. “I was taking care of Harry.”

“You- what?”

“I was taking care of Harry,” Dudley repeated, more sure of himself this time. “He was pretty hurt last night. I gave him some food, put him to bed, and stayed with him in case his fever broke.”

He actually didn’t know if Harry had a fever or not. Harry’s head felt warm, but how warm Dudley wasn’t certain. He’d never checked anyone’s temperature before, and he definitely didn’t know where the thermometer was. Still, saying that he was waiting for Harry’s fever to break sounded less dangerous than saying that he was waiting for Harry’s freaky friends to show up. He was pretty sure he’d be inviting trouble if he mentioned that.

Even without saying as much, Vernon was floundering, staring fixedly at his son as though he had contracted a fatal disease. At long last he managed to sputter, “You don’t take care of a freak like him, Dudders. He’s not like us.”

“No?” Dudley asked, staring. “Does he not breathe the same as we do? Does he not eat the same as we do? Does he not bleed the same as we do?”

Vernon had turned red in the face. “You don’t have any idea what you’re talking about, Dudley. He’s a freak. His parents went and got killed because they were freaks, and he’s heading on the same path.”

“His parents were murdered, Dad! You don’t travel on a path to get murdered. Piers’ mum’s cousin was murdered three years ago, and she’s not anything like Harry. It has nothing to do with lineage. It just is.”

Dudley didn’t know where the words were coming from. He’d never felt so passionately right before in his life. All his questions about his parents, all his concerns were coming out in a great pile of word vomit before he could stop them. It was almost as though he had no control, as if he were watching the scene on the television. He was screaming, and his father was turning violet with anger, and then, before Dudley could even interoperate it, his father’s beefy hand had raised up and slapped him across the face.

Dudley stumbled backward, one hand reaching up to touch the tender spot where his father’s hand had met his cheek. Never before had Vernon raised a hand against Dudley. The shock of it was enough to ward of the pain, though how that worked Dudley wasn’t sure. All he knew was that it was that moment that changed him completely. He didn’t know how, exactly. Before he had been feeling sympathy towards Harry, and had felt a need to stand up for him, but it was only after his father slapped him that he realized that none of it was even Harry’s fault. Oh, he had sputtered on about how they all bled the same, but it was in that one moment that he actually felt it within him. He and Harry were no different. Their situations could have very easily been reversed. And his father… His father was a coward.

“I think you’d better leave now,” Dudley said to his father, his voice more calm than it had ever been in his life.

“I’d better leave,” Vernon repeated furiously. “Who the devil do you think you are?”

He raised his hand in the air once more as though to slap Dudley once more, and then he froze in midair. A startled expression crossed his pudgy face before he fell backwards, stiff as a board. Dudley stared transfixed at his immobile form before slowly scanning his eyes upward to the dark cloaked figure in the doorframe. So a freak had come after Harry after all.

Severus was up, dressed, and breakfasted by six thirty in the morning, but he still refused to check on Dumbledore’s owl. Of course, at this point it wasn’t actually because the owl would inconvenience him. It was more the principle of the thing. Now that the war was over, Severus shouldn’t be expected to be at Albus’s beck and call on a whim, and it was time that he taught the man as much.

Still, at seven o’clock on the dot he strode across his quarters and opened the door to his chambers. There was no reason to push the point, after all. He had wholly expected to find an irritated owl waiting for him, but the one he saw was positively irate. She nipped at him angrily, her amber eyes absolutely deadly. Severus frowned. It was unusual for Albus to get such a poor tempered pet. Perhaps it was a loaned owl.

Severus supposed it didn’t matter. She made no attempt to keep him from reading the letter, and that was the important thing. Of course, Severus noticed right away that there was something off about the letter. The fact that it wasn’t even in an envelope would have been a tip off even without his years of spying sharpening his observations. Of more interest than that, however, was that the letter was written upon regular muggle paper rather than parchment.

Severus quickly unfolded the thing, taking in that it was not Albus’s handwriting on the little scrap of paper. As his eyes scanned the brief note, his heart sank inside his thin chest. If the note was to be believed- and Severus could see no reason why it shouldn’t be- then Harry Potter was in trouble. And here he’d been worried about proving a point about his sleeping schedule to Albus.

Severus sprinted out of the castle toward the edge of the anti-apparation boundaries, his stomach feeling as though a thousand animals were burrowing into it. Aloud he cursed at Potter for being enough of an imbecile to need saving, but his heart wasn’t in it. It was his own stupidity that had him arriving so much later than he should have. If something had happened to the boy he would never forgive himself.

He apparated as soon as it was possible to do so, soon finding himself in the meticulous, still sleeping neighborhood of Little Whinging, Surrey. It all seemed so quiet and peaceful that Severus almost allowed himself to calm down… But if the Potter brat was being abused, it would not affect the neighborhood as a whole. Severus knew only too well that abuse could be kept behind closed doors, hidden so well the secrets might never be uncovered. Not until it was too late.

Locating Potter’s house was a nightmare. Every house on the street was identical, and his only clue as to which one was Potter’s was the miniscule numbers upon the doors. He sped down the street, his eyes scanning each number as quickly as he could. Ten... Eight... Six... There! Four! He skidded to a halt in front of the door and pivoted so that he could face the house.

Why was he running? Running would not really make much of a difference. He would only appear hysterical as he burst through the door at top speeds. Better to do things a little more slowly, make less noise, and observe a bit before acting. He stepped up the front steps and cast a quiet Alohamora, but he needn’t have bothered with the quiet. Nobody would have heard him over the yelling going on upstairs anyway.

He headed toward the source of the noise, using his powerful deduction skills to figure out that whomever made the noise was the one endangering Potter. He thought about that ever so briefly. Why was it that he was always the one saving Potter’s skin? How had that happened? The elder Potter would be rolling in his grave to see it.

Sighing, Severus pushed such thoughts from his mind. They were not conducive to his current recon mission. He almost snorted at that. He’d been around teenagers far too long if he was beginning to look at his life like a James Bond film. At the top of the stairs, he found himself facing a door with at least twelve different types of locks on it. It was from there that the shouting was coming. Surprise, surprise.

He turned in just in time to see the largest man he’d ever had the misfortune of casting his eyes upon striking the flat of his hand across the face of an equally large blond boy. Severus frowned. He hadn’t caught sight of Potter yet, but if his intuition was correct it was Potter that the two were fighting about. Typical. He couldn’t even fight his own fights, but had to send some fat kid to do it for him. Pompous brat.

Now the whale boy was instructing the man to leave. Odd, that. Severus wasn’t surprised when the man didn’t take to it too kindly. Who would? Severus was still watching the scene play, watching the man raise his hand at the boy, when he saw the deathly pale figure lying upon the bed in the back. Potter.

Before he knew what was happening Severus had stunned the fat man and stepped out of the shadows. The element of surprise was completely gone now, but he supposed it didn’t matter. Even if the boy chose to fight him, he would be competing against an incredibly unhealthy fourteen year old. Not particularly challenging.

“Are you one of Potter’s freaky friends?” the boy asked, cocking his head to the side as though sizing him up.

Severus sneered at him. What kind of question was that? The strangest thing was that the boy didn’t even seem to notice how rude the inquiry was. Well, no explaining the manners muggles were brought up with. It was almost no wonder Potter was the way he was, with his father’s genes and the muggles raising him. “I am neither Potter’s friend nor am I freaky.”

The fat boy rolled his eyes. “You’re a… a wizard, though, right?”

Severus sneered again. “Correct. One out of three.”

The boy didn’t even seem to hear him. He was fuming again, and his voice rose an octave when he next spoke. An entire family of people who couldn’t control their emotions. How grand. “What the hell took you so long?”

“Pardon?”

“I sent Hodfog with that letter ages ago. You should have been here already!”

Inside, Severus winced slightly, but outside he kept his usual cool demeanor. “I came from Scotland. What did you expect?”

The boy seemed to deflate slightly. “Sorry. I just… He’s in really bad shape. Potter, I mean. I dunno, I’m worried. I think he’s gonna die.”

Severus stepped past the whale boy to investigate Potter. He really was in bad shape. In fact, pug-head’s assessment of his nearing death really wasn’t so far fetched. If Severus had to guess, he would say that it was only Potter’s magical core that was sustaining him now. It wouldn’t last much longer. He needed to fix this, and fast.