The Paranoid Harry Potter

Dumbledore had not been having half as good a time. The last two weeks had been extraordinarily stressful for him. Harry Potter had disappeared into thin air and no one seemed to know where he had gotten to. It had taken the order the better part of a week just to track down the Dursleys and they hadn't even gone that far. Kingsley had eventually tracked them down to a small hotel in one of those towns with unpronounceable names in Wales. However instead of clearing things up, the Dursleys had only confused matters more.

According to Petunia, Harry had burst into the house and told her that Voldemort was about to attack any minute. He had ordered her to go into hiding before leaving the house moments later.

However, there had been no attack on the house. Apart from the assault on Mundungus there had been absolutely no Death Eater activity at Privet Drive. So why had Harry told his Aunt that Voldemort was about to attack? Had Voldemort sent Harry some sort of a false vision? What could have made Harry run away on his own? Why hadn't he stayed to ensure the safety of his relatives? Could it be that there had been a force of Death Eaters about to attack the house? Had Harry led them away to ensure his family's safety? It was quite conceivable that the boy had witnessed the attack on Mundungus and then decided that the best way to keep his family safe was to make the attackers chase him.

But then, why had Harry not gotten in touch with him? Surely, the boy was aware that he would keep him safe. Why had Harry not sent him an Owl? As far as he knew the boy still had that snowy owl. It had not been left with his relatives, nor had it been left behind at the house. So why had Harry not contacted him?

It was all very worrying. He frowned as he looked at the disassembled components of his deluminator that were currently laid out in neat rows upon his desk. He had a lot of work to do. Harry had always been extraordinarily difficult to keep a track of. While it was true that most tracking charms lost precision the further away the caster was from the target it was still relatively easy to track most people.

Unfortunately, Harry had always been a special case. His mother's protection upon the by had always made most charms fail shortly after they were cast. So years ago, he had obtained a small amount of Harry's blood and incorporated it into a tracking device. This had needed to be tied into a array of runic stones that he had planted all over Britain. His deluminator worked in conjunction with this runic array and as long as Harry was within the magical net created by these stone he was always able to track him to within a few feet.

Now though, his detection array was absolutely useless as Harry was no longer within Britain. That meant that he had to come up with an entirely new way of tracking Harry.

This had been quite difficult even for a wizard of his vast experience.. There were several rituals, of course, that could be used to pinpoint Harry's location using his blood. However, they all suffered from one severe drawback. He would have to use the only sample he had of Harry's blood to power them and the nature of the rituals and charms usually inevitably destroyed the sample. That meant that he would have only one chance if he used such a rituals.

Since Harry had disappeared from England so suddenly, there was no guarantee that he was still not travelling. If he used his only sample in one of those rituals and Harry moved from that location before Dumbledore managed to get there then he would never be able to find him again.

Dumbledore knew that he could not take that chance. That was the reason he was constructing a new homing device. It stood on a small workbench looking for all the world like an oversized compass suspended within a gyroscope. One that had a few too many dials. It was almost completed although it was still open with many large and small gears displayed within it. All it needed was one final component. The one he was currently extracting from his disassembled deluminator.

He sighed tiredly as he picked up a tiny component and peered at it through a large magnifying glass he had floating in the air. He waved his wand once over it and the casing split apart and unfurled like a flower. A tiny vial of crystal was revealed - one that was filled with a dark red almost black substance. Dropping the remains of the casing upon his desk he strode to the workbench where he carefully inserted the vial into a slot deep within the device. With a series of clicks and whirls the vial locked and sunk into the device. Gears shifted as the device closed up with a crisp clicking sound and started to spin. Finally it settled after spinning wildly around on all three axles. Dumbledore peered at the dials displayed upon the face of the device.

The main dial was pointing to the south-east while the other dials were flickering randomly at different markings across the face of the device.

"Hmmm, an error margin of 18.5 percent, signal strength at 36 millifeys. If Harry is somewhere to the South-east, and if the signal strength degrades at a linear rate then...hmmm..."

He strode over to a bookshelf and pulled out a large roll which he opened and kept suspended in mid air. It was a large map of Europe. Conjuring up a protractor and T-Square, he spent the next several moment furiously drawing and measuring lines upon the map. Finally he was done. He tapped furiously at a spot upon the map. How had Harry managed to get there? Why had he gone there? If he had been forced to make a guess, then he would have chosen France or even Bulgaria. After all, Harry had gotten somewhat friendly with the other Triwizard champions. But this? Did Harry know someone who lived in that country? He did not think so.

"Well, it seems that Harry has somehow managed to find his way to the Netherlands. The boy will never cease to amaze me."

Dumbledore sat down behind his desk and started writing out several quick notes.

"Fawkes, could you please deliver these to Remus, Severus and Nymphadora."

As his phoenix flashed away in a burst of flame, Dumbledore leaned back in his chair and relaxed. He would soon have Harry Potter back where he belonged, safe and sound.

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