Chapter Text
Damp cold clung to Privet Drive and turned breath into ghosts. Albus Dumbledore slowly walked down the street extinguishing the lamp posts to provide the privacy he needed. Only the faint set of his shoulders suggested the weight of what had happened.
"Fancy seeing you here, Professor McGonagall."
"How did you know it was me?" she asked.
"My dear Professor, I've never seen a cat sit so stiffly."
"You'd be stiff if you'd been sitting on a brick wall all day watching," said Professor McGonagall. “You told me the Potters were… that it was true,” she said, and there was a flicker, a crack that almost let grief show. “They're saying he tried to kill the Potter's son, Harry. But he couldn't.”
Dumbledore gave a great sniff as he took a golden watch from his pocket and examined it. "Hagrid's late. I suppose it was he who told you I'd be here, by the way?"
"Yes," said Professor McGonagall. "And I don't suppose you're going to tell me why you're here, of all places?"
"I've come to bring Harry to his aunt and uncle. They're the only family he has left now."
"You don't mean -- you can't mean the people who live here?" cried Professor McGonagall, jumping to her feet and pointing at number four.
Before Dumbledore could answer, the night changed.
A distant roar rolled down the street, wrong for this quiet place. It swelled fast, then cut sharply as something large and fast dropped out of the clouds and over the rooftops. Wind shoved at hedges and rattled a loose bin lid. The flying motorcycle came in low, a dark bulk against the lamp glow, and for one startled second it looked like a Muggle accident about to happen.
Then it settled with impossible control at the curb, tires kissing the road as gently as a bicycle.
Rubeus Hagrid swung one leg over and climbed off as if his body did not trust the ground after flying. The machine was too small for him, absurd beneath his size, and it still looked like it could take off again if it disliked being kept still. He reached back into the sidecar with careful, awkward tenderness and lifted out a bundle held tight against his chest.
His face was wet. Whether from tears or the damp, it hardly mattered.
“Professor Dumbledore,” Hagrid managed, voice thick. “Sir.”
The bundle shifted, and for a heartbeat Dumbledore saw the smallest of movements, a soft hitch of breath, a tiny hand that did not quite have the strength to unclench. The child was there. Alive. Wrapped in a thin blanket that had already taken on the cold.
Minerva made a sound that was almost a growl. She took one step forward, toward the bundle, toward the baby.
“Hagrid,” he said gently, “you did well.”
Hagrid’s shoulders hitched. He looked down at the infant, then up again, pleading in the way he rarely allowed himself to be. “He’s so little,” he whispered. “He’s got no one now. Not really.”
“He has family,” Dumbledore said.
Minerva’s restraint snapped into speech. “Family?” she said sharply. “Albus, do you really think it’s safe to leave him with these people? I’ve watched them all day, they’re the worst sort of Muggles imaginable. They really are.”
The words came out like a confession she had been forced to hold too long. Her eyes were bright. Not with tears. With anger.
Dumbledore did not flinch. His expression stayed mild, almost sad, as if she had accused the weather.
“They’re the only family he has,” he said.
Minerva’s hands tightened at her sides. “That doesn’t make them fit. You know what they are. You’ve known for years.”
Dumbledore looked past her, toward the nearest house, number four, neat as a pin, the curtains drawn, the garden trimmed even in autumn. The kind of home that prided itself on being unremarkable.
“Fit,” he repeated quietly, as if tasting the word. “Minerva, the wizarding world has just had a shock it can barely understand. There will be questions. There will be eyes. And there will be those who would make a child into a banner before he can even speak.”
“We can hide him without… without this,” she insisted, the last word catching on whatever she refused to name. She took another step toward Hagrid, toward the baby, and this time she did not stop herself.
Albus simply shifted again, still calm, still preventing contact without raising his voice.
“The safest place,” he said, as if it were obvious, “is the place no one will think to look. The place that offers him nothing of our world. No whispers. No reverence. No expectations.”
“And no kindness,” Minerva shot back.
Hagrid let out a rough sound. “Professor, I could take him,” he said, desperate. “I’d look after him proper. I would. I’d”
Dumbledore’s gaze turned to him and, for the first time, there was something firm in it, not unkind but immovable.
“You could not,” he said, and it was not an argument. It was a fact delivered softly. “You would be watched. You would be followed. And you would be used against him.”
Hagrid swallowed, eyes shining. He shifted his hold on the bundle, as if adjusting the blanket could adjust the night.
Minerva’s voice lowered, controlled again with effort. “Albus,” she said, and there was a plea in it now, quieter than anger. “At least let me”
“No,” Dumbledore said, still gentle, still final. “It must be done cleanly. Quickly. We must go.”
The phrase carried urgency without ever admitting why. The cold hung around them like an unseen pressure. The sleeping street remained oblivious, the houses holding their breath.
Dumbledore took a folded piece of parchment from inside his robe. The letter was already written, already sealed, neat as if the world had not burned only hours before. He held it out to Hagrid rather than placing it himself.
Hagrid stared at it, then at the baby, then back again.
“I don’t like it,” he whispered.
“I know,” Dumbledore replied, and it was the closest he came to an apology. “But he will be better for it.”
Minerva stared at him as if he had spoken in a foreign language. ‘Better’. As if hardship were a tonic.
Hagrid moved at last, slow and reluctant, down the short path to the front step. He crouched with enormous care, setting the basket down as if it were the most fragile thing he had ever held. He adjusted the blanket, tucked it tighter, the way a man does when he cannot do the one thing he wants most, which is to pick the child up and run.
Dumbledore stepped forward then, not to touch the baby, but to place the letter neatly on top of the blanket where it would be seen. A clean line of ink against a messy world.
Minerva stood rigid behind him, all the fight forced into stillness because there was nowhere for it to go. “You’re doing this,” she said, voice thin, “and you won’t even hold him.”
Dumbledore’s eyes remained on the doorstep, on the small bundle, on the ordinary wood and ordinary brick that had become the hinge of a life. “He will be ordinary first,” he said softly, as if to himself as much as to her. “That is how I keep him safe.”
Minerva’s mouth trembled. She closed it hard.
“Good night, Professor McGonagall,” Dumbledore said, and the courtesy felt like a lid being placed on a box.
She did not answer him. She turned away instead, sharp and angry in her posture, and strode back into the darkness as if she could outrun the guilt that would follow her for years.
Hagrid lingered, staring down at the baby, shoulders shaking. At last he turned too, wiping his face with the back of his hand. The motorcycle waited at the curb like a nervous animal, engine ticking as it cooled. Hagrid climbed on, hands clumsy on the grips. The bike lifted soundlessly a moment later, rising above the rooftops and vanishing into the damp dark.
Dumbledore watched them go. The street stayed quiet. The cold stayed. The basket stayed.
"Good luck, Harry," he murmured. Convinced he had made a hard choice for the right reasons, he turned on his heel and with a swish of his cloak, he was gone.
Leaving the night to do what nights did when no one was watching.