If Berti had any lingering doubts about the existence of magic, and any remaining concerns about the collective sanity of her family members, those issues were put to rest soon after everyone was back in the living room with luggage bulging. Dumbledore produced his wand, gave a quick flick, and all the suitcases and bags shrank to be no larger than a ring box. Berti shrieked at first, regarded her miniaturized baggage with a sharp eye, then looked long and hard at Dumbledore, Harry, and Hermione in turn. She didn't say anything about her first exposure to the reality of magic, and neither did she put up another moment of protest or utter another word of doubt about anything that followed.

And if anything would test a muggle's mettle when faced with the wizarding world for the first time, it would be the events that followed that luggage-shrinking incident. Dumbledore led them to the closet in the bedroom that Hermione had been using during their holiday stay, and without a word he opened the door. Just inside, wearing a gray pin-striped pair of boxers with pin-striped suspenders to match, was Kimmy. She looked somber and closer to her age than Harry or Hermione had ever seen her. Berti balked for the briefest moment at the sight of the strange creature in her closet.

"That's Kimmy," Hermione whispered to her grandmother, and with a quirk of one eyebrow and a press of her lips Berti took it in stride.

Dumbledore parted the coats in the closet to reveal the small-scale door to Kimmy's portable home never-away-from-home. Another swish of his wand caused the door to enlarge to four times its normal size. After that, it was small matter for the entire group to walk into Kimmy's likewise engorgioed abode. Berti lagged behind by only the smallest degree, but follow she did, without speaking a word.

They had to do a bit of hop-scotching over Britain to get where they needed to be, like travelers with connecting flights. From Kimmy's fireplace they flooed to a public fireplace in Diagon Alley. Berti was a trooper as she trailed after those in her family more familiar with the magic shopping center of sorts. Harry excused himself to accompany Dumbledore alone to the wizarding bank. His errand lasted no more than five minutes, and when he was finished Dumbledore took them all to yet another public fireplace for the next leg of their journey. That floo connected them to a wizard's hearth outside of Surrey. The resident welcomed his fire-born guests warmly, exchanged familiar words with Dumbledore, was gracious to the muggles (enough to make one suspect he was muggle-born), did a double-take when he realized who Harry was, then it was out the front door like a pack of vagabonds, the whole of their belongings stuffed in their pockets.

From there they walked, a strange entourage, though there was no one to witness it. The streets were empty; everyone was inside the houses opening gifts and spending time with their loved ones. It made the multitude of houses the happier on the inside for it, but the streets outside the gloomier. Harry knew these streets; they'd always been bleak and foreboding to him, but today was by far the worst the streets had ever been.

When they reached the single-digit block of Privet Drive Harry sought his aunt and uncle's house. It wasn't hard to spot. From nearly the entire block away Harry could see the damage. There were enormous black scorch marks on the façade. The paint was scorched and burnt. The grass was dead in seemingly random strips and patches, as though a Dementor had frolicked in the lawn and left decay in its wake. On the second floor… Harry paused and Jake nearly ran into him from the back when Harry saw that part of the house was missing. Dudley's bedroom wall was gone, destroyed, torn open and leaving the room within bare like the innards of a mauled deer. The car had been upturned and set on fire. Flames still licked from the windows, though feeble and flailing because everything that could burn had already.

There were wizards and witches everywhere, swarming the place. Probably Aurors, most likely some ministry officials, too.

Harry hadn't been prepared to see the house so devastated. He thought of how immaculately clean Petunia always insisted the house be, and all for what? It was a wreck now. No amount of dusting and vacuuming in the world would put the house to rights. Vernon made such a fuss about the yard, because appearances were all-important and the yard was out there for all to see, and that was ruined, too.

Harry approached the house with the others, in a state of mild shock. He wondered why the muggle police weren't thick as flies around the place… or thick as Aurors, as seemed to be the case. It was obvious from a block away that there had been an act of unbelievable violence in this quiet neighborhood… why wasn't it causing more of an uproar?

As the group got closer, Harry was less certain of the damage he thought he'd noted from the end of the street. A house nearer and he could swear that he'd only imagined the Aurors. In fact… he wasn't entirely certain he was on the right street. He started to look at the other houses on the block, trying to read their numbers to get his bearings, when Dumbledore waved his wand and Harry blinked. There it was, as he'd seen it before. The house in shambles, the yard destroyed, the wizards and witches working over the house like industrious ants scurrying around a shattered mound.

"Confudus charm when you get closer," Dumbledore explained.

Harry didn't respond other than to nod dumbly.

When they reached four Privet Drive they walked on to the browned, brittle grass and stepped over gouges in the ground. The Aurors took note of their arrival but only one, presumably the head Auror, approached them. "Dumbledore," he said gravely and then spared a meaningful, intent look at Harry before turning again to Dumbledore, "I hadn't thought you'd bring the boy."

Harry was too far gone, staring at the damage to Dudley's former room up-close, to neither notice nor care that the Auror was talking about him as though he wasn't right there.

"Harry asked to come."

"That isn't wise. You're endangering him by bringing him here."

"Not as much as you believe, I should think. Voldemort will not return when a quarter of the Aurors in the Ministry of Magic are here," Dumbledore replied confidently. For a moment Dumbledore examined the damage to the house. "Have you found anything?"

The Auror looked sidelong at Harry for a few seconds then shook his head and sighed. "Nothing we didn't already know. Nothing that will help us track You Know Who down." The Auror growled under his breath. "After he was defeated the first time we were so sure we'd whittled down the ranks of You Know Who's followers enough to neuter them from posing this kind of threat ever again. We thought it would safeguard against this."

"We all let hope enchant us, I'm afraid," Dumbledore said.

"Where are my aunt and uncle?" Harry asked as he turned from examining the house to address the Auror for the first time.

The Auror regarded Harry seriously then ticked his chin toward the house. "Inside."

Harry set his eyes on the front door and took a long, deep breath.

Hermione came up beside him and touched his hand. "You don't have to do this, Harry."

Harry's jaw set. He was sure of only one thing right now. "No, I do."

Jake placed his hand on Harry's shoulder. "We're with you, son."

That gave Harry more courage than he would have predicted. With a pause to steel himself for the worst, he started toward the front door. Without having to look, he could feel all of them following after him. Hermione, Dumbledore, Miranda, Jake, and Berti. Even Berti didn't drop back, utterly baffled and deluged with more new information than she could comfortably process though she was. They all bolstered his resolve with their support.

It carried Harry to the front step.

The door was unlocked. Harry pushed it open and already it was like another reality had shoved into this one in the small space taken up by four Privet Drive. This looked nothing like the house Aunt Petunia kept. It was unfit to be seen. It would reflect badly on the Dursleys to have their home look like this. Debris was everywhere. Glass littered the floor. Burn marks blackened the white banister of the stairs. The carpet was ripped and curled in the corners like wet parchment. The photos on the wall were smashed or missing or merely black pits. Aurors were here, too, pouring over every inch of the house.

Harry stepped into the foyer and gazed around. His cupboard under the stairs no longer had a door. How many times when he was little had he wished for that? Just as many times as he'd wished the door was ten times thicker, he decided.

Harry walked slowly through the house… what was left of it. It smelled. Of fire and death and fear. Harry knew what each of those smelled like, and the house smelled like each in turn.

Where had Dudley died? Would there be… marks? A bloodstain, a residual image burned on the wallpaper like some victim of a magical Mount Vesuvius? Maybe there hadn't been enough left to salvage for a decent memorial service. Dudley Dursley might be mourned at his funeral using an empty casket.

How had he died? Was it quickly? Somehow, deep in his bones, Harry didn't think so. Dudley was not brave, just cruel. He would have screamed. He would have cried for his mother who could not save him and he would have flailed and maybe that made Harry a monster for being the cause of it.

"I want the lot of you out of my house! You've no right! Your kind are the reason my son's dead!"

Harry's every sense sought out his uncle at the harsh, sudden sound of his voice. He sounded different… he'd never sounded quite like that before. It was more than angry, less than the indomitable monster he'd seemed to a five-year-old undernourished child. More and less, less and more, Vernon and unlike him all at once… like the house around him.

Harry found his aunt and uncle in the kitchen; he needed only follow Vernon's bellows. Vernon and Petunia were both still in pajamas, though smeared with soot and… and blood. That answered some of Harry's questions, though he could have gone just as well without having those particular answers.

Vernon's face was purple and twisted with agony and rage. Petunia was shaking and crying, a frail waif at her husband's side. Her hair was a frightful mess. Her hands were red.

An Auror had been trying to reason with the Dursleys, to no avail, when those arriving with Dumbledore came into the kitchen, Harry at the head of the procession.

"I don't give a damn who you're looking for! GET OUT! I want none of your kind here!"

Petunia, simpering, looked up and her watery gaze fell on Harry. Instantly, her eyes widened and she wailed like a dying beast.

Vernon's eyes snapped to Harry. His expression turned darker violet… and murderous.

Harry swallowed. Where to start? "Uncle Vernon, Aunt Petunia… I heard… I'm so sorry…"

Without a word, Vernon marched swiftly across the room and unceremoniously punched Harry in the face with his ham-like fist.

Several things happened at once. Harry went down from the blow, because he knew it hurt less to follow inertia when it came to his uncle's 'lessons', taking into consideration Vernon's advantage of size. Harry toppled to the floor with the coppery taste of blood in his mouth. In the same instant, Hermione lunged forward toward the Dursleys, just as Dumbledore caught her, taking special care to keep her hands restrained. Berti audibly gasped. Jake immediately stepped between Vernon and Harry, heedless of the fact that Vernon easily outweighed Jake by seven stones. "Sir! Please, restrain yourself!"

Vernon glared down viciously at Harry, as though unaware of Jake right in front of him blocking his way to Harry. His rage had given him tunnel-vision. "YOU! It's your fault! You killed our Dudley!"

Harry brought up a hand to his mouth and winced when he touched the place where his lip had split. He wiped at the blood trickling down his chin as he looked up at Vernon. "I'm sorry… I didn't want—"

"But you DID! You killed him just as much as they did, you hideous little freak. We took you in, and this is what we get for our trouble? We should have smothered you the moment you turned up on our doorstep, would have saved us so. much. GRIEF! Would have saved Dudley!"

Petunia dropped to her knees crying and rocking to and fro.

"You wouldn't have dared…" Hermione seethed hotly and pulled ineffectually at Dumbledore's restraining hands.

Vernon's fierce gaze snapped over to Hermione. "I nearly did, you bloody little wretch. But Petunia said 'he's my sister's, Vernon, we can't just kill him'. She thought he might be set straight! Ha!" Vernon turned mad eyes back on Harry. "Would that your life had been traded for Dudley's, you worthless shit!"

Harry slowly got to his feet and presently stood facing his furious uncle, Jake still standing firmly between them. Harry wiped a streak of blood off on the back of his hand and glanced at the stain. With abnormal calm, Harry looked his uncle square in the eye and said simply, "That's the last time you do that, Uncle Vernon."

"You're damn right it is! I never want to see you near us again! Consider yourself homeless, and good riddance; you've been filth in this house from day one! I hope the people who did this find you. I hope you payfor what you've done to our family!"

From behind him arms were tugging at Harry lovingly, drawing him into a protective hold. Miranda. Harry went without a fight. Jake risked taking his eyes off Vernon to glance toward Harry, checking on him in his stretch of silence.

Vernon spat caustically at Jake and Miranda, "You'll get the same if you associate with this freak of nature. He's a curse. You're bloody more than welcome to him. Now get him out of my house!" With that, Vernon whirled around and returned to his wife's side.

Miranda's arms held Harry tighter, and Harry was worried if she kept doing that he might do something frail. Like cry. He couldn't do that. His threadbare control was all he had, all the Dursleys had left him in the last five minutes. Harry couldn't show his aunt and uncle such weakness. He couldn't be the pathetic little boy they always professed him to be. If he broke, he'd become that; he'd make them right. He couldn't let it happen. It was ingrained; he never let them see him in pain.

Harry struggled in Miranda's hold.

"Shhh… honey," Miranda said gently, "it's all right."

But it wasn't. Harry swallowed the lump in his throat and pulled himself from Miranda's safe, motherly arms. His voice was on the cusp of broken even to his own ears. "Don't. I… I need a couple minutes. I have to get out of here."

Dumbledore, still holding on to Hermione (for she still looked fit to throw a few hexes at the Dursleys), said gravely, "Harry… you can't go far. You can't leave the premises. It's too dangerous."

Harry was about to hit the point of frantic. "I… fine, I won't, I just… I need to go." Anywhere but this house, anyplace away from Vernon and Petunia.

At that Dumbledore gave a wordless, understanding nod, and Harry pushed past the Grangers, past Gram, past the Aurors, and out of the wrecked house of his tormented childhood. It had been a place of darkness before, but now the blackness was suffocating. It was stained with death, and for all Vernon's ranting he was right about one thing… it was because of Harry that Dudley was dead.