Chapter Text
It was still a beautiful sunny day when Michael walked through the front door of the office. He greeted the doormen, the cleaning staff, and the few employees who were willing to start their shift before eight in the morning.
He calmly drank his coffee, devoured a chocolate or two from the display case they made sure to restock twice a week, and went to his office to begin working on the paperwork for the last case that had been closed.
Everything pointed to a quiet and worry-free shift.
But obviously it changed shortly before lunchtime when Julienne, Michael's secretary, rushed into his office.
“Excuse me, sir. It’s an emergency,” she said bluntly as she sat down across from him.
“What happened this time?”
“An anonymous report of child abuse,” she said, handing him the papers that Michael didn’t notice she was carrying.
There were photos from security cameras, in which a man was holding a boy of about six years old by the neck, dragging the little one across the yard.
“My God.” He held the photos, but still hoped it was a mistake. The problem was, it wasn’t. This couldn’t be dismissed as a mere “disciplinary matter” as he was used to hearing from people like the man in the photo and sometimes cops. The boy was young, and Michael couldn’t help but notice how thin he looked.
“The anonymous tip came from someone with access to Wayne Enterprises’ security cameras. An employee, maybe.” Michael resisted and didn’t roll his eyes.
“It doesn’t matter, Jules, it’s an anonymous tip for a reason.”
“Of course, you’re right.” She sighed. “This got to the police, and they’re asking someone from the institute to accompany them on their visit to that house. And you’re the only one available today.”
“I can go,” Michael said without hesitation. “When is it?”
“Today, at two o’clock.” She looked at her own notes and then continued, “They’re sending a car to pick you up.”
“That’s a relief.” He sighed. “Thank you, Jules.”
“I need to warn you that they might be a little skeptical about this case.”
“The fact that they took the initiative to pay a visit is already better than what we normally expect.” Personally, he desperately wished that all these allegations were false, and he always hoped that those officials who didn’t pursue reports of child abuse were right.
Unfortunately, life didn’t work that way.
Unfortunately, children were abused with ridiculous frequency for a country that claimed to care for and protect its own.
Unfortunately, in most cases, the children returned to live with their abusers because they lacked external support. That’s why the Safe Child Institute existed. To closely monitor these cases and provide the best possible support for the victims and to pressure parliament to pass policies for the protection and punishment of victims and abusers, respectively. They managed to change very little in their meager ten years of existence, legislatively speaking, but every time they managed to remove these children from abusive homes, they put aside any and all frustration.
A sad but necessary job.
“I’ll let Glinda know, then.”
Glinda McBride was a slightly older employee at the institute, who usually supervised these police visits. Besides, he and Glinda had certain… angles that only the two of them knew how to find in these children. It was Glinda who called him to work at the institute when they reconnected after school. They weren’t in the same grade, but Michael’s older sister and Glinda were very close friends. She told him about the case of a nine-year-old girl who ended up in the hospital after being beaten for dropping an egg on the floor while helping her mother cook.
“She almost went blind.” Glinda said with tears in her eyes. “If…” she looked around and only continued speaking when she was sure that no one around them in the cafeteria was paying attention. “If there are Muggles who treat Muggle children like this, can you imagine what they can do to the poor little ones who are born wizards? If they don't understand... Of course, there are bad people everywhere, and we saw at school how some pure-blood families treat their children, but I never… I never imagined that the situation could be so much worse."
It was on that day that Michael decided he wanted to help, and his friend (they ended up becoming friends) recommended him for a job at the Institute. He found his purpose there and decided to quit his “official” job, safely investing the small fortune his Aunt Holly left him and working solely for the cause.
“Do we have their names?” he asked her as they approached the place, a small neighborhood in Surrey.
“The parents are Petunia and Vernon Dursley. And the boys are Dudley and Harry. We don’t have details yet about what’s going on, but I hope this will be clarified.”
Getting out of the car in front of the house Michael recognized from the photo, they saw two police cars parked with the front door open.
“Michael Henderson, Glinda McBride?” an officer stopped them near the fence. He had dark skin, was quite tall and thin, with stubble and short hair sprinkled with white strands and was smoking a cigarette.
“Yes?” Glinda replied.
“I’m Sergeant Thompson.”
They exchanged quick words and greetings before Glinda got straight to the point. “How’s the situation, Sergeant?”
The man sighed, looking tired and overwhelmed.
“Horrible. We were waiting for you so we could interview the children, but… It’s clear things aren’t good.” He threw his cigarette on the ground, stepping on it, and motioned for Glinda and Michael to follow him. It was a strange feeling entering a house that didn’t seem like people lived in it. Everything was meticulously clean and smelled strangely like a hospital. Two boys were sitting on the sofa, their eyes wet. One was tall, somewhat blond, and very overweight for his young age. He was crying and yelling at the police officers who were looking after them.
The other boy was quiet, shorter, and Michael was almost certain that this child was malnourished.
The sergeant spoke softly enough for only Michael and Glinda to hear. “The bigger one is the couple’s son, and the other boy is the nephew they’ve been caring for since his parents passed away.” Glinda took a deep breath and sat down in one of the armchairs facing the sofa.
“Hi boys, my name is Glinda, and this is Mike,” she always used that nickname in front of the children, saying it was to help them remember. Michael found it funny and never said that her name was harder to remember than his.
“We’re here to talk to you, okay?”
“I want my mom!” the boy Dudley shouted.
“I know, dear, but we need to know a few things first, okay?” She replied, “You can tell the whole truth, nobody will be angry with you.” Dudley agreed after some fight and the questions began.
It was possibly one of the strangest “interviews” Michael had ever witnessed, and while Glinda quickly jotted down the answers on her clipboard, he paid attention to the boys’ body language.
Dudley, who was now eating a candy that Glinda had taken from her bag when he finished answering the questions, seemed excited. Again, it was Harry, the cousin, who worried him most. The boy just stared at the floor and breathed, sometimes flinching when the other boy’s voice got a little louder.
“Your turn now, Harry.” Glinda turned to him and was about to start writing down the answers when the boy whispered
“You don’t have to give me candy.” His voice was so soft that for a second Michael thought he had imagined it.
“You don’t like candy?” the young woman asked. Harry took a moment to answer, probably wondering if he should tell the truth.
“I’ve never eaten candy.” Michael and Glinda paused at the same time.
“Really?” Glinda carefully confirmed. “But Dudley said your aunt always gives him chocolate.”
“That’s true. But…”
“He never gets anything,” Dudley laughed, nudging his cousin.
“Let Harry answer, please,” Glinda reprimended firmly. “He didn’t interrupt you when it was your turn, remember?”
The boy shrugged, and Harry continued. “I don’t get chocolate or sweets.”
“Never?” He shook his head. “Birthday cake?” No again. “How old are you, Harry?” He needed to think before answering, and even then he hesitated.
“Eight.”
“Okay. Well, I have a candy here for you, if you want. It’s strawberry.” He seemed surprised. “You’ve ever eaten strawberries?” Glinda asked, holding out the candy to him.
“Once, when my Aunt Petunia bought some and threw them away because they were spoiled.” As he opened the candy, Glinda glanced sideways at Michael.
“I’m going to ask you the same questions I asked your cousin, okay? You can answer truthfully, even if it’s a different answer than his.” Harry nodded, and the same questions followed.
When Glinda asked what Harry’s room was like and the boy pointed to the cupboard under the stairs, Michael instantly felt a pang in his chest, and it was at that moment that Sergeant Thompson interrupted and asked if he could take a look. Harry’s face turned red with embarrassment, but he said yes. The sergeant opened the small door and almost hit his head on the ceiling of the room (the stairs) as he entered. Glinda didn’t return with the questions, she just observed what the “room” Harry had mentioned was and Michael saw himself nudging her to continue
“I see a nasty bruise on your neck, Harry, what happened?” He didn’t answer, but put his hand to his neck. “You can tell us, Harry. We’re here to help you.” This seemed to encourage the boy, who took a deep breath and tensed his jaw as he replied,
“My uncle hits me if I do something wrong, or if… something weird happens that he thinks is my fault.”
“What kind of weird thing?” Michael gently nudged Glinda again, asking her to slow down.
“Once, when Dudley was chasing me, I appeared on the roof of my school.”
Definitely one of those cases.
“That must have been terrifying.” He nodded
“And what’s your full name, Harry? We know your cousin’s because of your uncles, but do you know yours?”
“I heard my aunt say it to the teacher once and I haven’t forgotten. My name is Harry Potter.”
Harry Potter.
The name echoed in Michael’s brain, and Glinda’s jaw dropped, but she recovered quickly.
Because of the children, and the Muggle police officers looking around the house, Glinda and Michael had to fight off their reactions. But, if this is true, then it means…
“Well,” she began, interrupting Michael’s thoughts, “Thank you for answering the questions, darlings, have another sweet.” Harry took another strawberry candy, and Dudley took two random ones.
Michael and Glinda left the room and met with Sergeant Thompson, who immediately lit another cigarette. Michael couldn’t blame him. If he smoked himself, he’d have one between his lips right now too.
“I don’t even know where to begin.”
“I know,” Glinda replied. “The boys can’t stay here.”
“It’ll take some time…”
“Sergeant, with all due respect,” Michael said, intending to disrespect the officer, “The boy could die. Any day now. Either from negligence or from injuries. Are we seriously letting bureaucracy get the best of us in this case?”
“They’re starving the poor thing while overfeeding the other. It’s not healthy for either of them,” Glinda added. “This is a highly dangerous case.” Thompson only answered after a drag,
“I agree. The situation in that… room. It’s not right.”
“Speaking of understatemant…” Glinda cut Michael’s snort short with an elbow to the ribs.
“Did you talk to the adults?”
“Unfortunately, yes.” He tossed his cigarette ash onto the grass and turned to look at the street. “Despicable people."
“So you agree that it’s absurd to leave those children there.” Michael’s colleague stated more than asked, and the Sergeant didn’t answer immediately.
“I’m taking them to the police station.” He said. “Find a way to get the boys out of here.” And he disappeared into the house through the kitchen door.
Glinda immediately went inside the house as well, but through the living room door, and Michael could hear her “calling for reinforcements” for the institute. What actually caught his attention was a woman nearing middle age, looking directly at the house from inside her window.
“There. We should have a car in a few hours straight to London.”
Instead of asking 'And where are we going to put these kids?', Michael chose to focus on another subject and indicated for Glinda to accompany him down the street.
“McBride, what’s going on here? Someone put Harry Potter in a place like this!” he intentionally hissed a little louder than he perhaps should have.
“I don’t know! It’s impossible that nobody knows about this.” She agreed. “If the wizarding world finds out about this…”
They passed in front of the house of the woman who had been spying on the street earlier, when the door opened. “Good afternoon,” Michael greeted when the woman poked her head out.
“Do you know about the Potters?” she asked suspiciously.
“Yes,” Michael replied quickly, ignoring Glinda’s protest.
“I know who brought him here, if you’d like a cup of tea.” Michael only regretted accepting the invitation because the woman’s house was a little unhygienic. The smell of cat and cat urine was strong and made his eyes water. He barely drank the tea, but accepted it out of politeness. And it wasn’t so bad. It was only when she sat down that she resumed the subject. “My name is Arabella Figg, and Albus asked me to keep an eye on little Harry when he left him here that very night, you know?”
“Albus Dumbledore?”
“That’s right. He, Minerva, and Hagrid brought the baby here and left him at the door.”
“Didn’t anyone talk to the Dursleys about what happened? That Petunia had lost her sister? Or, I don’t know, give advice on how to deal with accidental magic?” Arabella Figg just shook her head, her face taking on a conflicted expression.
“From what she told me, they just left the boy in a basket with a blanket and a letter.” Mrs. Figg paused, and the others still remained silent, waiting for her. “They usually leave the boy with me when they’re on vacation or going on trips, you understand? And I noticed how thin he was, the bruises… I’d have to be blind not to notice all that.”
“Did you try to notify anyone?” Michael asked, dreading the answer.
“Albus himself.” She shrugged. “I was only authorized to give him news about Harry.”
“And what did he say?”
“That a little discipline doesn’t hurt any child.” See, as former Hogwarts students, Michael and Glinda were extremely frightened by the notion that the headmaster they knew, who always presented himself to the children as a “kind old man,” could be so negligent in such a serious case.
“When did you speak to him?” Michael was the first to overcome the shock and resume speaking.
“Harry was four years old and showed up with a bruise on his back.”
“Oh, Merlin.” Four years ago. There wasn’t much more conversation after that, and the volunteers left shortly after, waiting for about two hours until they could get Dudley and Harry out of the house and take them to a safer place.
Glinda and Michael didn’t speak to each other for the rest of the evening, and when their ride arrived, they put the boys in the car and drove off without looking back until they arrived in an orphanage that was very close to their building in London, one of the first orphanages that had passed their screening and been associated with the Safe Child Institute.
Accommodating Harry and Dudley (in separate rooms) was a blur in Michael’s mind, but he made sure to check with one of the staff members about Harry’s special needs, and saw Glinda do the same with the director.
After bidding a final goodbye to the boys and promising to return the next day, they walked silently through the streets of London until Glinda broke the silence. “We need to visit Hogwarts.” She was fidgeting with the sleeve of her coat, a nervous tic Michael had witnessed many times over the years.
“I know.”
“But I don’t want to talk to Professor Dumbledore yet. First, we ensure Potter’s safety. First, we try to place him with a decent family.”
“Do you think we should talk to McGonagall?”
“That’s the only way.”
And the next day, after visiting Harry and Dudley at the orphanage and seeing the younger boy eat a meal, the volunteers wrote a rather vague letter to Professor McGonagall requesting a visit whenever she had some free time. The teacher said she had some free time that day, at teatime, and Michael and Glinda didn’t think twice before going through the fireplace when she let them in. The two found themselves in the deputy headmaster's familiar office before dusk.
“Henderson, McBride. It’s good to see you,” she said, with a handshake.
“It’s good to see you too, Professor, even if the reasons aren’t ideal.” She gestured for them to sit down, offered biscuits, and after a bit of small talk, they got down to business.
“Well, how can I help you?”
“Look, Professor,” Glinda took her turn, “Michael and I do volunteer work at an institute in London that deals with cases of… child abuse. And since we’re wizards, we keep an eye on these children, looking for signs that they might also be magical and then giving them all the support possible until one of two things happens: the child reaches Hogwarts age and we submit a request to the Ministry to relocate the child to another house, or we simply submit the request if the child is already in the school.” She paused, “That is, of course, when working with Muggle-borns.”
“It’s necessary work.” The teacher conceded. “But why did you only come here today?” Glinda and Michael exchanged glances, and he decided to answer this time.
“Yesterday we learned of a case… Peculiar, if I may say so, in which three school employees were involved.” The teacher immediately frowned.
“Which case?”
“Harry Potter,” Glinda and Michael answered together.
“Excuse me, Harry Potter?”
“Yes, professor.” He placed his teacup on the table. “It’s no secret that Muggles are investing in surveillance cameras, and we received an anonymous tip…” he continued, explaining how they got there, what it was like meeting the boys, and stopped at the part about the interviews. “When we were waiting to take them to a shelter, a neighbor named Mrs. Figg called us over to talk, and we discovered that she had witnessed some of the aggressions.”
The woman was pale, and if Michael hadn’t felt so angry, he would have felt sorry for her. “But, that’s… She never told us anything, we had no way of knowing.”
“Professor, I hate to tell you this, but… She’s in regular contact with Professor Dumbledore, giving him updates about the boy.”
“And she said that,” Michael continued to Glinda, “when she reported the abuse to him, he didn’t think much of it and said something about how a little discipline didn’t hurt children.”
“What we need you to understand, Professor, is that there’s a big difference between what Muggles understand by discipline and what we often categorize as child abuse, and there’s a misunderstanding in between. That’s why we’re always extremely careful when investigating these cases; the tendency for it to simply be dismissed as ‘disciplinary punishment’ by the authorities is very high.”
“It’s usually different with extreme cases, but it happens. Yesterday we didn’t need to push to move Harry and his cousin from the house because the Sergeant who accompanied our visit agreed that there was a high possibility of a fatality occurring, regardless of how.”
“He could have died?” she asked, perplexed.
“Yes, Professor. But we managed to get him to a place we’re sure is safe. We visited them today and… It’s going to be a long recovery process, but just leaving that house behind made Harry a different child.”
“Albus knew…” she murmured. “I warned him. I told him those Muggles were abominable. But he didn’t listen. He said that Lily Potter’s sacrifice allowed a kind of protection using her blood to keep him safe in the house of close relatives on his mother’s side, and that’s why we were leaving him there.”
Michael frowned. “Sorry, Professor… Protection?” She nodded. “I didn’t feel there was any kind of magic in the house.”
“Neither did I.”
The professor’s shocked face would forever be etched in Michael’s mind, but before anyone could say anything else, there was a knock on the door. The older woman tried to compose herself, unsuccessfully, and asked whoever was there to come in.
“Minerva,” Professor Snape greeted. Still with that same frown that never left his face, Michael couldn’t help but notice.
“Do you remember Glinda McBride and Michael Henderson, Severus?”
“Unfortunately.” The professor made a blank face. “Two of my best potions students, but they decided not to pursue the career. A waste.” Michael suppressed a smile as Glinda said it was a pleasure to see their former professor again.
“What do you need, Severus?” the Deputy Headmistress asked, and the man launched into an explanation of a prank that Peeves, the poltergeist that frankly, should have been exorcised decades ago, had played on some fifth-year students.
“We’re leaving now, Professor. We’ve come to say what we needed to. The child is safe, and we’ll let you know of any updates, good or bad.” Michael was quick to invite himself out.
“If I were you, I wouldn’t tell anyone else we’ve come for a visit. You must have already realized that some of the parties involved can’t be trusted,” McBride reminded her.
“Of course. Thank you for coming.”
They quickly made their way to the fireplace and set off into Hogsmeade, but before Michael could head to the apparition point, Glinda indicated Madame Rosmerta’s picturesque Three Broomsticks.
“I need a drink after today,” she said, walking two steps ahead of him. “You too.”
Michael didn’t even tried to fight her on this.
It had been quite a day.