“So, Ma’am. We found your nephew wandering the streets rather injured. He had suffered a blow to the head and is severely malnourished. Is there anything you’d like to say for yourself?”

“Yes.” The woman’s eyes were shifting all over the place, constantly flitting between the door and him as he spoke.

“The boy is evil. I’m saying…” She became distracted as he shifted in his metal chair.

“Will you stop that?” She screeched, “That noise is so… distracting. The little freak did something to us, it’s like it was like we couldn’t control ourselves. He made us dance in the living room. He’s evil, I’m telling you! He’s the devil spawn! Even now his spell is making me…”

“Can’t you stop shifting for one second and just stay still? Is this how you get information, force us to endure constant distraction while you ask questions?

He looked down. The sound was barely noticeable.

“Ma’am, have you seen a doctor or had a history of mental illness in your family?”

“Of course I’m not insane!” The unpleasant woman screeched, “It’s the boy, he did this to us. We were all perfectly fine just yesterday. What about all our strained legs and arm muscles, huh? You think we just did that for fun, is it? Is this what the police force has come to, accusing innocent people while not even questioning the real culprits?”

“This real culprit. A nine year old boy,” he said, “Severely malnourished. Bruises all over his body. Wearing old worn out clothes. A strong blow to the back of the head that could have been fatal. You think this boy…”

He looked down at his notepad as if to read something. There was nothing but scribbles in there. But it was a great prop when doing interrogations when he wanted to emphasize things.

“What was it? Forced you to dance until you severely strained your muscles. Then… cast a spell on you to force you to hear and see things?”

“The things are always there,” the woman said, “I just can’t stop paying attention to them now. Oh, this is torture. I knew that boy was rotten from the start. Just like his mother and father, freaks the lot of them…”

“The boy’s parents. What happened to them?”

The woman stilled for a second, “Car crash,” She said, “Only their son survived. My nephew.”

He looked at her for a moment. Clearly there was more to the story than she was saying. But he already had enough for now. Frankly it seemed like a pretty clear cut case to him, but best to gather the most evidence possible just in case they had a good lawyer. But he also shouldn’t push too far and lead her to finally going over the edge, or they’d use that to show that he was trying to intimidate her or some nonsense. He stood, “Well, that’s all for now, Ma’am. Just knock at the door if you need anything.”

He opened the door to the interrogation room and left. He shut it behind him and turned to his partner.

“It’s all recorded on the video, right? That’s prime evidence, tell me I didn’t do that for nothing.”

“We got it,” his partner said grimly, “Real nutcase, that one. Calling her own nephew devil spawn… Just when you think you’ve seen it all on this job.”

He clapped the man on the back, “Hey, we caught them this time at least. Mental illness is clear as day on the tapes. Boy’s got injuries we can prove are from them. We’ll get him out of there and somewhere safer. That’s what we’re doing this for, right?”

“Yeah. Hey-”

Suddenly both men straightened upwards and their eyes glazed over as they stood there. An old man with a long white beard walked through the door. His normally twinkling eyes were stormy as he opened the door to where Petunia Dursley sat.

She looked up, eyes still darting around as she sat there. “D-D-Dumbledore?! What are you doing here?”

Dumbledore frowned as he saw that even now Petunia was still distracted. Without saying a word he pointed his wand at her. He was skilled at this, but incantations made his magic more powerful. “Legilimens!” He said firmly and entered her mind.

He combed through all her recent memories, stiffening as he saw Petunia almost kill the boy who lived. Did kill him according to her memories. He didn’t detect tampering, but memories were fickle things. She was likely correct in her thoughts after that she had mistakenly thought Harry Potter dead and he had instead just been very close between life and death at the time.

Not that those actions made it any better. He kept searching through and witnessed Harry Potter using wandless magic, a wandless imperius curse nonetheless, to force his aunt and uncle to dance to complete exhaustion. Then placing a mind altering spell on them. Was the boy polyjuiced? What had happened to produce such a change in the boy since his last report from his spies among the neighbors?

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Dumbledore inspected Petunia’s mind, and found the offending spell. He inspected the spell for a bit, looking at it from every angle. How odd. An unfamiliar spell. He didn’t see many of those these days. Things were growing even more interesting now. A wandless imperius curse was worrying on its own. Incredibly worrying. But this spellwork swung his opinion in the opposite direction. This showed refinement, training in magic. By someone talented. He retracted his probe and left the spell in place and fell in deep thought.

Either the boy was someone else polyjuiced in disguise. Unlikely. Why would they blow their cover for something like this? Or, a wizard had found and trained the boy. Somehow trained him to control his wandless magic to this level at only nine years old. But who? Who could have done it? Dumbledore pondered over the options. But no one he knew came to mind.

His mind solidified around the idea that it was a mysterious teacher. It was possible if the boy had an extreme talent for wandless magic and manipulation spells like that both to accomplish the spells Dumbledore had witnessed. Some powerful wizard had taken him in and tutored him somehow undetected. Then this whole course of events happened, leading the boy to expose his newfound skills.

Dumbledore had seen the boy’s face in the memory. He had not looked at his aunt and uncle’s faces, their eyes pleading for mercy, like many sadists would do when torturing their victims. He had only looked at their limbs, his eyes tracking the two of them as they moved. More enthralled with their movements and coordinating them to dance together in interesting ways than worried about them as people at all. Nothing more but puppets to be moved on his strings.

Dumbledore stroked his beard thoughtfully. A dark impulse. Far darker than he had ever expected from the humble boy he had been told of in the reports. But the boy was still nothing like Tom Riddle. He just needed some more… focused guidance than Dumbledore had planned.

It was a problem Dumbledore himself often dealt with personally. Viewing his allies as nothing more than pieces on the board to manipulate and move to accomplish his goals. Not people but objects to be moved on his whim. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t remember to think of them as his friends or allies if appropriately reminded to do so.

Yes, it was still salvageable. Dumbledore would just have to keep a very close eye on the boy. And make sure to formulate some strategies to divert his development to more fruitful paths after this lapse steering him towards a darker path. And to keep an eye out for his mysterious teacher. Who knows what their agenda for the boy would be in the future.

Given what Petunia had done… it would be best for the boy to go to the orphanage. Regardless if he would have the blood protection or not. If the boy was already casting magic wandlessly then he should probably be able to handle the lower level death eater dregs that he had worried would attack the boy while he was in the muggle world.

Without Voldemort around to rally them, the more skilled assassins wouldn’t move on Harry Potter until they had a better measure on his character and inclination or lack thereof to join the dark faction. He was the boy who defeated the dark lord Voldemort after all. Many said that he might be the next dark lord to replace him.

Not that Dumbledore would ever let that happen.

He didn’t have to intervene to get Harry put in the orphanage. Petunia had already done enough to lead to that to happen without him doing anything. Now, time to tidy up…

He pointed his wand at Petunia, “Obliviate,” and erased her memory of everything after the police detective had left the room. He cast one more sympathetic spell to erase all video footage of him that was taken in the last few minutes. This one was much harder to learn, but very useful for situations like this.

Then with one final flick of his wand, Dumbledore apparated away, disappearing from the police station in a single crack of displaced air.

— — —

Eric was shipped off to the orphanage two days later. The people around him seemed to think that he should feel bad about himself, or not want to go…

But he really didn’t mind. He had to sleep in a big room with the other children nearby, but that was fine. He was just happy that the authorities had arrested Harry’s aunt and uncle. He hadn’t heard what happened to Dudley, but he probably had been sent to Vernon’s relatives. Whoever that may have been. None of Harry’s lingering memories seemed to dredge up anyone that could match that description. But there were plenty of holes, so it's possible they existed and Eric just didn’t have access to them.

Harry had been avenged. Eric thought he had done a pretty good job with it. No one was killed, but the Dursleys still got their comeuppance. Eric turned it over in his mind. Yes, he did his duty for Harry as thanks for the body.

But now this was his body. This was his new life. And he had to start living it to the fullest. First thing first, was fixing these stupid eyeballs. He couldn’t believe Harry had walked around like this all the time. It was like peering through a foggy glass, he kept feeling like he’d trip into things it was so bad.

There must be some way for magic to fix this, better than these dumb glasses that made him look like a ‘dork’ as one kid had said one time.

It was kind of nice being around the other kids at the orphanage. They were wary of him, but after smiling and doing a little dance they laughed and seemed to somewhat accept him among them.

He was strange, but a good strange. Some of them danced too after he went, all of them giggling a little at the ridiculousness of it all. Dancing and music had always been Eric’s refuge in that hell after so long. He was fascinated when he heard music coming out of the radio of a car. Music was so different and richer than it had been back in his day.

“Hey, Eric!” He turned and saw one of his new friends approaching. He smiled, “Hey John. What’s up?”

He had introduced himself as Eric Potter. Unfortunately he couldn’t change last names. It was in his records and would raise too many questions. But he could change his first name no problem and most people wouldn’t bat an eye. Plenty of people went by their middle names instead of their first names.

“Hey, the Matron just told us that she’s bringing out a big radio to play some music. You like that stuff, right? You should come!”

“Ohh. Yes, sounds good,” Eric said, “I haven’t heard too many of the latest songs. I wonder what’s on?”

He followed John down the hallway and let himself relax as he saw the Matron struggling to set up the bulky radio machine in the main room. Seems like it wasn’t an ambush or hazing of some kind. Huh. Eric glanced at John. This kid might actually want to be his friend. Maybe he would end up liking it here.

The Matron put on the radio and Eric let the strange unfamiliar music wash over him with a blissful expression. Plenty of food for them, kingly beds, a roof over his head, and maybe even friends too. What more could a boy wish for?